by John Conroe
“I knew I heard someone out here lurking about. You better get in here,” she said with a curious glance at Mack.
The sinking feeling turned to plummeting lead as we followed her inside. Tanya stopped beating on Chris and turned to look at me, eyes going head to toe and brows rising at my lack of gym clothes. Lydia, Stacia, and Arkady all stood nearby, staring.
“You’re late, but you brought us a snack,” Tanya said, glancing at Mack, who went white in the face.
“She’s kidding. Ah, I forgot, Tanya. We were making this,” I said, holding up the breaker in both hands, “—and time slipped.”
“You made a cross? To repel vampires?” Lydia asked.
“No it’s like a butterfly pin for pesky, fluttery little pixie vamps,” I said. “Actually, we call it Blade Breaker.”
“What exactly is it for?” Chris asked, curious and amused.
“It’s for her,” I said, pointing at Stacia, “in her beast form. We based it on a sword breaker from China.”
Suddenly, Tanya was right in front of us, taking the breaker from my hands and flipping it around as though it were a reed.
“The cross bars do what?” she asked.
“Thing Two, rise and present three blades. Freeze,” I commanded the bug in the corner. “See, if the point is shoved against the carapace, the cross pieces are just at blade length. The force of the bug’s own motors will bend or break the blades against the edges. At least in theory.”
“Spin it up, bug. Let’s move past theory,” she said.
The were whacker was running, and the steel blades hummed at high revolutions. Tanya stepped forward and jabbed the breaker against Thing Two’s armor. There was a loud clang, a snap, crack, and a zing, but I was ready. Two blades had bent, but the top one snapped off and was flung toward Lydia, stopped by the hasty shield I had thrown across the audience. The shard hung suspended about stomach level, point-six inches from Lydia’s body.
“Nice catch, kid. Almost made that butterfly pin thing become reality,” she said.
“It gets yanked hard when the blades hit, but if you’re ready for it, it’s not bad,” Tanya said to the others. Then she flipped the bar like a bo staff. The weighted end rang off the pede’s head, knocking the heavy bug backward.
“Hmmm. It’s not as unwieldy as it looks. Hits hard. Why doesn’t it jar my hands?” she asked us.
“I put some mojo in it. That might settle it out,” I said, pointing at the runes.
“What’s the pattern in the steel?” Chris asked.
“NYC DPW,” I said. “We used some of your manhole covers,” I said.
“Where did you get the tools to do this?” Lydia asked.
“We, ah, improvised,” I said, keeping my shield around my head, which caused Nika to frown.
“You’ll need your beast form,” Tanya said and after a moment of contemplating the breaker, she threw the heavy weapon to Stacia, who so far hadn’t said a word. The blonde girl hefted the weapon for a moment, eyed myself and Mack, then set it upright on its end while she pulled her clothes off.
Mack’s eyes widened at the brief glimpse of perfection she offered before Changing into her other form. From centerfold to horror movie in seconds flat. Her massive beast form is, in its own way, just as impressive as her human one. My buddy’s face had changed from shocked awe to stricken awe as he was reminded of what she was.
With a low growl, she plucked the blade breaker off the floor, its length no longer looking outsized. Taking a few moments to get used to it, she twirled it around her big paws smoothly.
“The weight at the butt end kind of ruins the lines but we needed to balance it out,” I said. “And it could use some paracord wrapping at the hand points.”
Stacia glanced at me, then strode toward Thing Two. While we had been talking, the metal bug had lowered its damaged blades and turned, lifting the unmarked portion of its body and snapping open four or five blades. Now they spun up to full speed as the wolf beast prowled forward.
Instead of jabbing like Tanya had done, Stacia chopped down at the pede, the pick-like cross-piece hitting the bug just in back of its head. The blow had tremendous force and it knocked Thing Two downward, leaving the same spot open to the follow-up from the hardened, squared-off butt of the weapon. Thing Two’s spinning blades slammed into the floor, clanging to a halt and definitely damaging more sharp edges.
“Interesting. More than one way to cut hide from pussycat,” Arkady said.
As the pede started to lift its front, Stacia pinned it down with the point and one of the cross-arms. Instantly, Thing Two flipped its damaged back end forward, arching its whole body like a scorpion’s tail. Stacia replaced the blade breaker with her foot on the pede’s closest head, smoothly rotating her weapon forward and jabbing the split point right at the junction of the head and first segment. The hardened tips slid up the stainless steel of the joint and under the armor of the head. Now she had full control of the creature, her body weight holding it down and her powerful arms easily holding off the tail. She paused then yanked her weapon free, standing back and letting the pede scuttle away.
“Hmm, lots of control techniques possible,” Tanya mused.
“A sharp stamp on the middle segment would likely let her paralyze it,” Chris said. “Then she’d have time to smash it with that nasty big bludgeon.”
“Let me try,” Arkady said, striding forward, hand out. Normally, he looks the part of a giant, but next to a werewolf beast form, he looked like a regular guy.
Stacia growled at him, reluctantly letting him take the breaker.
“What did you make it out of? It’s as hard or maybe harder then the bug’s armor,” Tanya said.
“We used the prybar and the head from the broken sledge,” I said.
“And where exactly did you get a forge and tools to process this much steel?” she pressed. Behind her, Arkady was smacking at the bug with the breaker, pausing to tell Stacia his thoughts on possible technique.
“Mr. Deckert said we could use the utility room, and I used magic,” I said.
“You turned my utility room, the one that provides life to my multi-million-dollar building, into a forge?” she asked.
“And didn’t even disturb the dust,” I said.
“If you don’t need him, I’ll take him back to the blade smithy and put him to work. We could quadruple the output. Plus, I think we got lucky with the heat treatment because we winged the hell out of it,” Mack said. “Possibly the first time anyone used magic to cryo-treat steel.”
“You quenched it with magic?” Tanya asked, her interest sharpening.
“Yeah, this guy can heat almost forty pounds of steel to critical with a thought and then drop it to way below zero in an instant,” Mack answered.
“So a high percentage conversion of austenite to martensite?” she asked him.
His eyebrows went up at her technical knowledge, but the rest of his head nodded. “Yeah, damn near a hundred percent, I think.”
“Declan, on Monday, I would like you to work with Dr. Susskins on the quantum project. Mack, you never heard me say that,” Tanya said.
“Okay, but you know my thoughts, right?” I asked.
“Nika will keep close watch,” Tanya said, glancing at her blonde friend.
“You bet, Declan. As distasteful as it may be,” Nika said.
“Now, I suspect you are thinking of turning Mack loose in my nightclub, correct?” Tanya asked.
“Katrina thought it might be okay. Actually, her words were of course, you moron.”
“She’s right. About the okay part, not the moron part. You will take a car and driver. Enjoy yourselves, but no alcohol,” she said, turning to Mack for the last part.
“I don’t like to lose my senses in an unknown city,” Mack said.
“Particularly in a nightclub populated with vampires, right?” Chris asked with a wink.
“There is that,” Mack agreed. “And you probably know that this guy doesn’t drink
at all,” he said with a thumb in my direction.
“Be like a five-year old with a flamethrower,” Lydia said.
I just looked at her while I spoke to Mack. “Come on, buddy. I want to show you my plans for a butterfly-slash-pixy collection.”
“Like you could organize a collection of anything,” she snarked.
“It might only need one specimen,” I said, turning and pushing Mack toward the door.
“Take the driver, Declan, and stay in the club. Mack, you will be completely safe in Plasma,” Tanya said. As I went out the door, I saw the white werewolf turn and look at me. She might have been grinning… or snarling. Hard to tell.
Chapter 37 – Chris
With the blade breaker in her paws, Stacia went from frustrated to terminally effective. Tanya stopped the practice when Declan’s bug was down to just two partially operational blades. It was so damaged, it could hardly scuttle.
“Well that’s fine for her, but what about us?” Lydia asked, pointing at Nika and herself.
“Try this,” Arkady said, lifting out of his gym bag a Glock pistol fitted with a suppressor.
“What? Here? In the gym?” Lydia asked
“Is okay,” the giant said, pushing the gun toward Lydia, who just looked at him like he was crazy. Nika reached out and snagged the pistol, racked the slide, and aimed at the robot, which was rattling and shaking as it tried to spin its damaged segments.
The gun popped twice, the action of the slide almost louder than the shots. The top third of Thing Two went rigid, segments lengthening out and freezing in place.
“Keep firing till enemy falls,” Arkady said to the blonde telepath. She rattled off a half dozen more shots and the robot’s entire body stiffened and fell over.
“Are those bullets bewitched?” Lydia asked.
“Yes. Boy vedmak puts tiny little scratches on ‘dem. Has made over a thousand,” Arkady said, studying the bug, which was beginning to twitch. “Seems to disrupt functions, but temporary. And look… they stick to bug.”
Little flattened 9mm slugs were sprinkled across the centipede’s armor, almost as if glued.
“So the girls could paralyze bugs and the rest of us could then smash them,” Tanya said, pointing to the giant vampire, the blonde girl pulling on sweats, herself, and me.
“Yeah, although Declan thinks there might be some upgrades coming that would make them resistant to magic,” I said.
“That’s just super,” Lydia said with a grimace.
“What would Declan be doing during all this shooting and smashing?” Nika asked.
“Who the hell knows? Something mildly devastating like shifting the tectonic plates or forming a volcano under the city,” Tanya said. Nobody laughed. “I’m joking… mostly. Between him and that book inside him, I’m sure he’ll devastate twice as many bugs as the rest of us combined.”
“It’s pretty crazy what he can do, isn’t it?” Nika asked.
“Crazy is a word I would rather not ever apply in the same sentence as Declan,” I said. “But remember, he does get tired, his shields aren’t perfect, and he is slow and soft compared to us.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Lydia asked.
“It’s supposed to make you understand that he needs us to protect him while he lays down area denial mayhem,” Stacia said.
“Oh, is that it?” Lydia asked, a smirk on her face.
Stacia pulled back and met the little vampire’s amusement with a glare of her own.
“You never thanked him for your toy?” Nika pointed out, her own lips twitching slightly.
“I’ll probably track those two miscreants down at Plasma and thank him while I keep an eye on him—them. On them,” Stacia said, picking up her bag in one hand and the massive breaker in the other.
“Hmmm,” Lydia said. “You should hold back a bit. Mack seems quite the ladies man, and he might be giving his roommate lessons. A couple of attractive guys getting the VIP treatment at Plasma are sure to impress a least a few girls.”
Stacia might have growled a bit. It was hard to tell. She definitely glared at Lydia before taking her leave. Tanya watched her go, a thoughtful expression on my vampire’s beautiful features.
“You press her?” Tanya asked Lydia, who in turn glanced at Nika before answering.
“She’s fighting with herself. Sometimes ya gotta cut through the bullshit to get to the essence of the matter. What I said was unvarnished truth. I told the staff to treat them like royalty, and I’m sure they will be noticed. I would bet money that our white wolf will be there within the next two hours. Wolves are very territorial, you know,” Lydia smirked.
Before anyone else could answer, the gym doors reopened to admit Tanya’s own wonderkin, Josh.
“We have a problem… a huge problem,” he said.
Five minutes later, we were all in Tanya’s office, clustered around the wall monitor watching a live news feed from Seattle.
“—I repeat. From what we know, Seattle PD is investigating a vehicle explosion that they confirmed has killed John Cuttle, the head of security for the Church of the True. At 9:24 this evening, eyewitnesses report seeing John Cuttle enter his SUV and moments later, it exploded into a massive fireball. FBI bomb squads are on scene. Reverend Daniel Castille has been taken to a safe location under heavy guard while authorities begin their investigation. We will continue live coverage of this tragic event.”
The feed switched back to the two news anchors who began speculating on reasons, causes, and rumor.
“We didn’t do that, right?” Tanya asked, looking specifically at Arkady.
“Not unless Darkkin started using missiles,” Deckert answered for his boss.
“Explain,” she said.
The blocky former Marine took the television remote and backed up the coverage to the amateur cell phone footage showing the SUV and then the explosion. He fiddled back and forth, finally freezing the shot.
“Okay, see here? This aerial shot, probably from a news crew drone, shows the blast site. Notice here how the wreckage is spread in an arc back toward the building, almost all on one side. If the vehicle was rigged, it would explode more uniformly. This looks just like a car hit by a small rocket, something like an AT-4,” he said, pointing out the patterns on the screen.
“You’re saying someone shot him with a missile?” Lydia asked.
“Or something. The angle this picture was taken at is close to where the missile came from. So maybe another drone,” Deckert said, leaning close to the screen and continuing to study it. “Pretty obvious missile damage. No wonder they brought in the FBI. A lot of cops have previous military experience. In fact, I wonder why the network’s military consultants haven’t caught on yet.”
“It gets worse,” Josh said. He was leaning against Tanya’s desk, looking at his tablet. Now he turned it and I could immediately see Rev. Castille’s face filling the screen.
“YouTube video Castille just uploaded minutes ago,” Josh said, hitting play.
“I blame myself. John Cuttle served our Lord and the Church with unstinting devotion and extreme competence. But I decided, in my boundless, sinful pride, to beard the lions in their den. I decided to confront the enemy in their Wall Street palace, in the very symbol of their outrageous wealth, and this is the result. I threatened to expose them, certain in my pride that they would back down from the light of the truth. But now a good man is gone and the monsters still prey upon us, still hoard resources enough for thousands of struggling humans, still chuckle softly to themselves in the dark as they thirst for our blood.”
Tears streaked his face and his bible was clutched tightly in his left hand as he spoke. At the end of the speech, he wiped one track of tears away, artfully leaving the other side to enforce his emotions. It was a devastating video.
“It’s going viral,” Josh said.
Tanya turned her head from the video and looked at her chief of security. “Any military contacts that could make the same observations
you just did who might feel like talking to the media? We need to show this in a different light and in a hurry.”
“On it,” he said, pulling his cell phone and stepping across the room to make a call.
“So who did do it?” Nika asked.
“Anvil,” Tanya and I said at the same time.
