“Whoa,” I said, looking at the stones. “Are these all rock lords?”
Galahad squinted at the stones. “I believe so,” he replied. “There was considerable concern when Ulysses Pendleton escaped that had enough other prisoners reached the fence, they would have been able to overpower the wards. A courtyard full of rock lords reduces the chances of that significantly.”
I stepped as lightly as I could on the cobblestones. Logically, I knew that there was no chance of any of the stones animating into one of the enormous stone golems unless I did something illegal, but just the same, it was unsettling. As we approached the main gate, two Ashgate guards came running toward us, flashlights shining in our faces.
“Identify—” one of them began. “Galahad?”
Once the lights were out of my eyes, I recognized Ken, one of the prison guards who’d helped us during the Ashgate riot. Ken looked at the corpses we carried, then punched his hand into his palm and keyed his radio. “Medical, I need two body bags at the north entrance.” We held the bodies until Ken’s associates arrived and wheeled them back inside the facility.
“I’m sorry, Ken,” Galahad said.
“What happened?” the other guard asked.
I didn’t recognize the other guard, but now that I wasn’t being blinded, I got a good look at her. She wasn’t wearing the traditional prison guard uniform, something that looked like brown leather body armor. Instead, she wore a business-casual pantsuit. One side of her head was shaved, and the hair on her other side hung down to her shoulder in a braid.
Galahad looked at her. “You must be Warden Mimsington,” Galahad said, shaking her hand. “I’m sorry for your loss. Your people fought bravely.” Galahad filled her in on what had happened at the Aquarium.
Mimsington nodded. “Honestly, I feared the worst when we lost contact with you,” she said. “It sounds like you were lucky to get out of there alive.” She looked at me. “Agent Corinthos, are you all right?”
I glanced down at my torn and bloody jeans. I guessed I probably looked three or four shades of awful right now. “Just fine, thanks,” I said.
“Did your team find anything in the Undercity?” Galahad asked.
The new warden shook her head. “The team went in expecting hostiles. Instead, there was a massive Romanian sleep charm cast in the area. Every one of my people is unconscious. They’ll live, but my medics say this can’t be broken or it risks shattering their minds. They’ll be out for a few days.”
I looked at Galahad. “I don’t like this, boss. I have the feeling we’re missing something big.”
“Agreed,” Galahad said. He tapped his earpiece. “Dave, do you have any updates?” A pause. “Dave?” Galahad looked back to the warden. “Have you had any contact with Uncle Dave?”
She shook her head. “He’s not a resource we typically use.”
“I’ve lost contact with him, Vincent.”
“Can you raise anyone else?” I asked. My own earpiece had shorted out when I’d gone for my impromptu swim. Assuming we survived this, I’d need to talk with Gears about waterproofing the things.
Galahad tried Leslie, Megan, Mrs. Rita, Gearstripper, and Kristin to no avail. He even tried calling Jake. Nothing.
“Open a portal to the office now, Vincent,” Galahad said, his voice urgent. “Something is wrong at headquarters.”
Chapter 9
We’ve been getting a significant uptick in undead activity over the last three days; it seems to have originated in the Bridgewater Triangle, but is gradually moving west. I recommend taking Vincent and Megan to the site to see if we can get a fix on the source.
— From an unsent email on Kristin Tanis’s computer
Thirty seconds later, we were in the lobby. The place was deathly silent. There were no alarms, no sounds of battle. The main lights were out, but the emergency lights cast a faint glow all around us. There was a faint burned smell in the air. Jake’s workstation was a mess; the desk had been toppled to one side, the screens that monitored the halls were on the floor in shattered heaps, and Jake’s chair was lying on its side.
I wished we’d been able to bring backup from Ashgate, but between the recent crisis and with so many of their staff under the influence of that sleep charm, they’d be running the prison with a skeleton crew as it was.
“Our first priority is to locate the others,” Galahad said.
“Floor by floor, room by room seems like the best way to go,” I said. “Want to start with Medical?”
“Yes, but you should arm yourself. Jake usually keeps a spare weapon in a locked compartment under his desk.”
I nodded, moved toward the desk’s remains, and pushed aside some fallen papers until I revealed what looked like a safe set into the floor. I opened it and flicked on my night vision. The spot where Jake kept his shotgun was empty, but his revolver was still there. The thing was comically big in my hands, and I wasn’t sure if I could shoot it. Beggars can’t be choosers.
Now armed, we went through the doors to Medical. The first room was a mess; the desks Mrs. Rita and Doc Ryan worked at had been overturned, there were papers everywhere. Kristin was lying face down in a pool of blood.
“Mother of God,” Galahad whispered and knelt down next to her. He carefully rolled her over. Her hazel eyes were open and unseeing. Her neck was a mass of gore; it looked like she’d been bitten by a vampire, who had then proceeded to tear her throat out. Galahad gently laid Kristin back and closed her eyes. “You will be avenged,” he whispered.
I swallowed a lump in my throat and ground my teeth together. Taking a deep breath, I focused my Glimpse, not wanting to see what had happened, but needing to.
Kristin stood in her hospital gown, hands up, feet apart in a fighting stance. Blood was running down her neck, and her eyes were glassy. She swayed as she tried to keep focus on her opponent, an upyr who’d just come through Medical’s main door.
“Mist,” she slurred, pointing at the upyr, “go!”
“Stay,” came another voice. Marcilla stepped out of one of the side rooms. The young girl’s posture was completely different. Gone was the frightened little girl, here stood someone who carried herself with the air of command. She somehow managed to make the hospital gown she wore look regal. Her grin was predatory as she addressed the upyr facing Kristin. “Pitor, you may have your fun with this one, now. Her fylgiar is quite happy to sit and watch, aren’t you, Mist?”
The hem of Marcilla’s hospital gown bunched up as if something had rubbed up against her affectionately. She scratched at an invisible spot by her side.
“Mist,” Kristin said, her voice desperate. “Mist!” The upyr called Pitor shot across the room and bit into Kristin’s neck. Kristin gave a gurgling scream as the upyr drank. As her struggles weakened and then finally stopped, he tore her throat out, and dropped her unceremoniously to the floor.
“There are two more back there,” Marcilla said, gesturing over her shoulder toward Herb’s room. “I believe Gregor is already in there, but you may share the man, if you wish. Just don’t let anything happen to Caulborn Hayes.”
I ended the Glimpse.
Before I could process what I’d just seen, a shout from down the hall caught our attention. “I said, you will not have him!” Megan’s voice. Galahad and I bolted down the hall and into the room, where we found Megan standing over Herb, a pair of upyr just feet away. Megan’s eyes brought me up short; they were pure white and glowing. She must be trying to compel the upyr away. The two upyr were standing next to the table the Rosario was resting on, one of them had his arm out, as if he’d been reaching for the broken weapon to use on Herb and Megan. My hand shot out, purple holy light encasing the two of them. Their skin immediately burst into flames, and they fell to the ground, rolling and screaming.
I intensified the light, wanting t
hem to suffer. They’d killed Kristin. They were going to burn like no undead had ever burned before.
A hand rested on my shoulder. “That’s enough, Vincent.” Galahad’s voice snapped me back. The upyr were nothing but charred piles of ash. Their clothes must’ve caught on fire at one point, because the carpet was smoldering, as well. I took a breath and used a bit of kobold faith to extinguish the clothes before the fire could spread.
Megan collapsed atop Herb, wheezing.
Galahad rushed over to her. “Are you all right?” he asked. Megan nodded, still gasping for breath. “What happened?”
“The girl, Marcilla,” she rasped. “She led a bunch of upyr into HQ. They came in through the air vents, drifting in like smoke… they got Kristin. Mist is gone. They were going to feed on Herb.”
“Do you know where the others are?” Galahad asked gently, putting a hand on Megan’s shoulder. She shook her head. Galahad produced his sword and held it in the air above his head like a torch. A wave of light emanated from the blade, and when it struck the walls of the room, they glowed slightly.
“I have consecrated this room,” Galahad said as he dismissed the sword. “No upyr or other undead can enter. Megan, stay here and watch over Herb. Vincent and I will send any other survivors we find to you.”
Survivors. Kristin was dead. I was struggling to process that. She’d trained me when I was new, and she’d helped me so much lately. How could this happen? Why…
I hadn’t realized I’d been speaking aloud until Galahad put a hand on my shoulder. “Vincent, we will grieve and honor Kristin’s memory later. But right now, we need to see who else we can save.”
I nodded, and we left Megan and Herb in the room. The rest of Medical was clear. Fearing the elevators may be trapped or inoperative, we took the stairs up to the second floor. The door to Gearstripper’s workshop was open, and my stomach clenched. I stepped inside, an aura of holy light around my fists. The shop was a disaster area, but that was nothing new. There could’ve been a full on barroom brawl in here and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
A rapid clicking and a high-pitched whine caught my attention, and Galahad and I edged around the corner of a table to find Gears lying on the floor, a metal device affixed to his back. Tiny arcs of electricity rippled along the gremlin’s body. The clicking sound was his claws clattering against the floor as he spasmed. The whining was Gears’s voice; he was speaking so quickly that I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
Galahad and I shared a look. We didn’t know what this device was; if we mucked with it, we might kill Gears. If we didn’t… Gears spasmed again and rolled onto his side. His little body looked emaciated; his skin was drawn too tightly across his bones. “I’m going to try to melt the device,” I said. “If I can hit it with a pulse of fire, I should be able to blow it off him.”
“He’s moving so rapidly,” Galahad said as Gears twitched. “Can you be sure you won’t hit him by mistake?”
I began working the chronometer, adjusting tachyon so that time slowed down. As before, I wasn’t moving any faster, but I could still think at my normal speed, and that was a definite plus.
I focused my attention back on Gears. His voice was now at an audible speed. “Linoleum, linoxin, calcium carbonate.” I wasn’t sure what that all meant, but what did matter was his twitches were in exaggerated slow motion, which gave me plenty of time to line up a pulse of elemental fire that blew the device cleanly off his back. The tachyon relapsed to normal with a crack, and Gears and I both fell over, panting. “Ow ow ow ow ow,” the gremlin whined. His breathing was ragged, and he flopped onto his back, his yellow eyes glazed. “Thanks, Vinnie,” he said. “A vampire came in here four or five days ago and stuck that thing onto my back. It happened so fast I didn’t realize he was in here. What took you so long?”
“Four or five days? Gears, Galahad and I only left here an hour or two ago.”
Gears’s eyes widened, and he laid his head back on the ground. “Wow. That was really bad.” He fumbled at the front pocket of his coveralls, pulled out a Hershey bar, and ripped into it.
“What was that thing doing?” I asked.
Gears had already finished the candy and was staggering over to the drawer where he kept his stash of macadamia nuts and corn syrup. “It made me really sensitive,” he said as he stuffed nuts into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and washed it down with a gulp of corn syrup. His body was already looking normal again as he tore into another candy bar. “Gremlins can sense what things around them are made of. That thing,” he gave the remains of the device a glare, “made it so that my senses were on hyperdrive. Normally, I know what things are made of at a high level; rubber, silver, aluminum. That thing had me sensing what things were made of at the molecular level. It was so much information to process that I think I might have had a stroke or something if you hadn’t come along, Vinnie.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet, Gears,” I said. “HQ’s under attack. There may be more upyr in here.”
Gears didn’t hesitate. He scrambled up the leg of the Billy-Mech and popped into the tiny cockpit. The mech cocked its wrist, revealing the laser blaster. “Galahad, would you bless this?” Gears asked. “I don’t know if it’ll help, but it sure won’t hurt.”
Galahad, who’d been silent watching Gears’s and my exchange, complied with the gremlin’s request. “Gearstripper, can the sensors in your robot detect any life forms around us?”
“Just a sec,” he said as Billy’s eyes shimmered. “Hoo boy, yes. There are five more above us.” Billy squinted up at the ceiling. “I think one of them is human.”
“What about Jake?” I asked.
“Not picking him up,” Gears replied. “I hope he’s okay.”
“We’ll check on Minus Three after we go upstairs,” Galahad said, referring to the sub-sub-basement where Jake made his home. We hurried up the stairs. Just as we came out of the stairwell, an upyr went sailing across the room and struck the wall next to my head. He slid down and flopped onto his face. A column of wind whipped around us, and a second upyr came hurtling down the hall and struck the same spot. There was the sound of a shotgun blast, and then bolts of electricity crackled from around the corner. An upyr came running toward us. I started to summon holy light, but Gears was faster. His blaster wrist was up and had blown two holes in the upyr’s chest before I could blink. The upyr looked down at his smoldering chest. Through the holes in his chest, I saw Doc Ryan and Leslie come charging around the corner. Doc had the shotgun. Leslie had arcs of electricity running along her arms.
The perforated upyr spun, fangs bared. Galahad summoned his sword and placed it right against the upyr’s neck. “I have no desire to kill you,” he said quietly. “But understand that I will. Why have you attacked us?” The upyr looked at Galahad, then at me, then his eyes flicked to Leslie and Doc. “You can’t run,” Galahad said. “You’ve lost. But you can atone for what you’ve done tonight. Tell me—”
The upyr lunged forward, faster than I could blink. Instead of attacking, though, he’d forced Galahad’s blade through his own neck, decapitating himself. His body collapsed into a pile of ash a second later. Galahad dismissed his sword and rubbed his eyes. He turned to Leslie and Doc. “Are you all right?”
“Fine, thanks to her,” Doc said, inclining his head toward Leslie. “I didn’t know you could do magic.”
“I am out of practice,” she said, wiping her hands on a hanky. “Five hundred years ago, I could’ve liquefied them with a combination of wind and lightning.”
“Five hund—” Doc began, but Galahad cut him off.
“Megan and Herb are in Medical,” he said. “Where are Mrs. Rita and Jake?”
“Jake was in Minus Three as far as I know,” Leslie said. “I don’t know about Mrs. Rita.”
“What about Kristin?” Doc
asked.
“Kristin is dead,” Galahad said quietly. Doc swore, and Leslie closed her eyes. Gears whimpered behind me. “We will grieve later,” Galahad said, repeating what he’d said to me earlier. “Dr. Ryan, Leslie, if you need to rest, Herb Wallenby’s room is warded.”
“Screw that,” Doc said. “I’m with you.”
“As am I,” Leslie said.
“Let’s find Jake next,” I said. “Is there another way into Minus Three besides the elevator?” I asked.
“Yes,” Galahad said. “This way.”
We got into Galahad’s office where the boss pushed a button on his desk, and part of the wall slid away. “There’s a secret passage in here?” I asked. “I never knew about this.”
“Hence the term ‘secret passage,’ Corinthos,” Doc said, rolling his eyes. He looked at Leslie. “Kids. Jeez.”
The passage was wide enough for one person at a time and had stairs leading both up and down. We started down but then heard explosions from above. We changed directions and charged up the steps, coming out on the roof of the building through what appeared to be a ventilation shaft. There must’ve been a dozen vampires on the roof, all circling Mrs. Rita, all of their eyes white with compulsion.
And yet, despite the fact they were facing a single foe, the vampires looked wary.
No one had noticed us yet, and I watched as one of the vamps behind Mrs. Rita shot forward. Before I could shout a warning, Mrs. Rita turned, caught the vamp by the throat, and hurled him bodily into a group of his fellows. As she did, another one shot forward, and Mrs. Rita brought her arm down, the moonlight glinting off a knife in her hand. No, make that two knives. Four.
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