by Arthur Slade
I subvocalized, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this covered.”
And I did have it covered. You see, once I was near the building, I could track their heartbeats. So I knew where my enemies were located in the bowling alley and none of them were even near the front. I opened the door slowly and was pleased to discover it was unlocked and had been recently oiled so it didn’t squeak. I slipped inside.
Damn bowling shoes were all over the front entry! Stacked up on the walls, strewn across the floor. They were all the same bad bowling-shoe colors and sizes you’d find in North America. It was as if there had been a stampede and the last act of the crowd before going outside was to kick off their shoes. I nearly tripped over a particularly gaudy red and orange shoe.
I took in my surroundings. There were several lanes to my left and the balls and pins had been spread out all over the place. It could have been any American bowling alley except for the foreign beer bottles along the wall. People bowling and drinking seemed dangerous to me, but humans are odd that way.
The heartbeats were in what I assumed was the cafe/bar area just out of sight.
The ceiling was, to my horror, suspended tile, so I couldn’t sneak across it without the tile coming apart around me. That only left the ground. The carpet had been laid in the 70s and perhaps last vacuumed during that disco era. I crouched down behind a counter and crept toward my targets.
As I got closer, I realized the five were arguing—barking back and forth in loud voices, and I guessed it likely wasn’t over who had the more up-to-date D&D manual. All the talking was in a guttural language that my ear placed as Russian, though I wasn’t an expert. I imagine there were James Bond-type spies who could recognize the language or exactly which corner of Russia their enemy was from. Not moi. I was an experienced eavesdropper, but there really wasn’t much point if they weren’t speaking English.
Glass broke. A tense silence followed. Then came rich and somewhat warm laughter. I snuck past another collection of ugly shoes and wormed my way behind the bar, so that I was several feet from them.
“You don’t need to get that close,” Dermot said in my ear.
He was so loud that I did an involuntary shudder. His voice was not supposed to travel past the earbud, but I didn’t trust the technology. “I only want to get a good sniff of them.”
“Your nose that good? You hadn’t mentioned that to me. I know it is a vampire superpower.”
Actually, Mom was a better sniffer than I. She said some vampires were as talented as bloodhounds at tracking down a scent, but my nose was only about twice as good as a human’s. Perhaps elsewhere there was training I needed to improve that skill.
“Let me do my work,” I subvocalized.
Truth was, I didn’t know what to do next. I didn’t want to leave without any sort of information at all. Even their names would be something. Or I could follow one of them home… if they ever left. But their grunting conversation soon made me grow sleepy.
Then one of the men shouted, “Hector!”
No one made a peep for several seconds.
My heartbeat started to speed up. This was finally a word I recognized—a name. Hector, of course, was the AI that Anthony Zarc used as the backbone of his organization. That computer brain had a crass, malevolent sense of humor and had tried to kill me with several metallic octopus arms. Only once, though. The second time we met he had tried to capture me. And failed. Well, truth be told, Dermot had given me a helping hand that time. As far as I knew, the only person who could give Hector orders was Anthony Zarc himself.
Hector had said I was outside his algorithms. I don’t know exactly what that meant, but it made me feel special.
I hoped to stay outside his algorithms.
One of the men began talking again in Russian. It continued to mean nothing to me. Ten minutes of talk passed. Twenty.
I lay there, muscles tensed, ready to leap up at any moment. But nothing happened.
They were going to talk me to death. There was nothing more boring than a long conversation in another language. I yawned. I stretched a little and my back made a cricking sound that I hoped no one heard.
Then one of the men said, “Amber Fang.”
It was my name, clear as a bell, and the shock of hearing it ran up and down my spine. There was another long silence. I had this horrible sensation that they were all looking over the bar at me.
Then one of them laughed. And I became aware of their hearts, and so therefore realized their bodies were still in the same place. Though one heart was beating a bit faster, as though the mention of my name had made the owner slightly nervous.
Or angry.
It was the woman’s heart. I knew that because it was smaller.
Then one of the men got up, made a sound that made me think he was stretching, and walked directly to where I was laying and, to my surprise, swung open a door to the “bar” that hid me. My legs must have blended into the carpet, because he stepped right over them. But I would be clearly visible if any of them were looking from the table.
I didn’t dare move because any motion would be easily spotted. So I stayed completely still.
He came back. I heard the ice crackle in the drink he was holding. He stepped over me and closed the door again. I had the overhang of the bar and my dark pants to thank for saving me.
I heard the man set down his glass on the table and I sighed. That was hellishly close!
Then the woman spoke up.
“A head shot has been okayed.” She said this in English.
“A head shot?” one of the men asked. I’m not certain why they had switched to English.
“She can be brain dead, but not body dead,” the woman explained.
Another shiver crept down my spine.
“So what would you use?” another man asked.
“Diamond-tipped shells.” This was the woman’s voice. And I had this horrible feeling I knew who she was. “They’ll go through anything, but there’s no mushrooming once they make contact, leaving her brain dead, but the body keeps working.”
“You are that good of a shot?” This was a higher-pitched male voice.
“Yes,” she answered. “Of course. You just have to hit her from the perfect angle.”
Hit her? They were obviously talking about me. I didn’t want to be accused of thinking the world revolved around me. But one way to keep my reproductive system in a peachy-keen condition was to put me in a coma. From a distance. Then Zarc could do whatever he wanted with my ovaries.
“Anthony’s modules predict that the homo sapiens vampiris’s brain matter will grow back,” the woman continued. “In fact, he’s tested the theory to limited success. And you get an easier-to-control subject. So it’s the perfect solution.”
We vampires do heal so much quicker than humans. Would our brains heal at the same rate? But what—or who—grows back into that gray matter? It looked like they had done some Mengele-like experiments. I wondered if it was on my mother. No, not enough time had passed for her brain to grow back. And Anthony Zarc seemed to want to keep her healthy and in good condition.
Then again, Grigoriy had said Mom was dead weight. That her eggs weren’t any good. Rendering her without value as far as ZARC was concerned.
One of the others began talking in Russian.
“I recognize her voice, Amber,” Dermot said.
“Yes, it’s your ex-girlfriend,” I subvocalized. “Hallgerdur Grettirsdottir.” For some reason I felt it was important to say her full name. Maybe that would dispel her—send her back to Nifleheim or whatever hell she’d crawled out of.
“You have to get out of there. Now!”
“I’ll do my best. But I can’t move yet.”
They had returned to conversing in English again. Well, specifically, Hallgerdur had started to talk again.
“Those shells will go through anything,” she said. “They’d even go through a wooden barrier on a bar.” I swear her voice was now pointed in my direction.
“Did you hear me, Amber?” she asked. There was that slight hint of her Icelandic accent, but her English was otherwise perfect.
I could just pop up and say, “yes.” But they would likely pop a diamond-tipped bullet through my head.
There was a pffft sound and a hole appeared about two inches above me, spraying splinters across my back. My heart started flipping out—beating in overtime.
“The next one won’t miss,” Hallgerdur said. “Stand up slowly, Amber.”
“Shit,” I subvocalized.
“Get out of there!” Dermot screamed.
But that was not an easy option. In fact, there was no other option.
So I stood up slowly.
Hallgerdur was pointing a long-barrelled pistol at me and smiling like she had just swallowed a tasty canary. She looked the same as when I’d seen her in Iceland eight months earlier. Same blonde hair. Same deadly figure (I mean that literally, she was nicely formed and viper-like). And those same iceberg-blue eyes.
And the same unwavering hand.
“Nice to see you, Hallgerdur,” I said. “Read any good books lately?”
“The book of death,” she said.
She raised the gun to point exactly at my forehead.
6
A Termination
There are times when seeing a familiar face can bring a glow to your heart. This was more of a burning pain. And the beginning of panic.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked, proud that I could keep my voice steady. “I am rather quiet.”
Hallgerdur did that thing where the barrel of her gun didn’t waver an iota. It’s distressing. I stole a quick glance at the four men. One was built like the Hulk but tanned brown, and probably rented himself out as a bulldozer. The other three were somewhat nondescript. One was even wearing glasses, though I imagined they were just “cover” so he wouldn’t stand out in a crowd. They had all drawn their handguns. The whole scene reeked of overkill.
I was just one eensy teensy vampire.
“Hector told us you’d be here,” she said.
That statement made me clench my teeth. The AI had predicted I’d be standing in a bowling alley in Sweden? I thought I was outside his algorithms. “How would he know?”
“Hector knows what he knows,” she said.
Now Hallgerdur had turned into the Sphinx. But it did mean Hector had predicted that I’d find Grigoriy in Belize and discover his ski hat and the card and that would lead me here. What else was that devious artificial mind predicting?
“You’re looking a little pale,” Hallgerdur said. “I assume it’s not just your complexion.”
“Indigestion,” I said, rubbing my tummy.
This caused her to give me a faint smile. “On that note, how is Grigoriy?”
“The cause of my indigestion,” I said.
She somehow shrugged without allowing the bead on my forehead to waver. “Well, he knew the risks. I guess his little ‘I repent’ gambit didn’t work.”
“It made him taste better,” I said. “In fact he tasted better than you.” I hoped the dig would force her into some sort of mistake. But she only curled her lips up a little bit tighter.
I noted that one of the men—Bulldozer, I’ll call him—narrowed his eyes and let out a little grunt of anger. My guess is that he knew Grigoriy personally. The others hadn’t reacted.
Hallgerdur made a signal with her free hand and Bulldozer went silent. But there was rage lurking behind his eyes. Now that was something I could perhaps build on: He had known and liked Grigoriy. How to turn that to my advantage?
But I couldn’t come up with a quick plan, so I said, “Your little computer commander can predict my actions. But how could he even know I would be in Belize?”
“There was more than one Grigoriy,” Hallgerdur said.
It took me a moment to compute that. They had sent their killers—how many I couldn’t guess—to beaches, to parks, all across the world. Then they had released their info into the wild and let me track them down.
Except I hadn’t tracked him down. Agnes of the Returns had sent me a text with all the info. Maybe she’d come across it on a book search for “murderous assassins.”
Unless it wasn’t her who sent me that note. Unless someone else—Hector!—had written that text to make sure I was in Belize to meet Grigoriy. That thought was a little chilling. My phone, the one I’d carried with me from Belize to Sweden, was perhaps being tracked, too. They’d know all sorts of details. When I travelled. Where I stayed. Who I travelled with.
They’d also know my high score on Candy Crush.
“We are severely compromised,” Dermot said in my ear. Wow, no shit Sherlock, I wanted to shout back at him. I hoped they didn’t know he was here. “Keep them talking, though. I’ll be there in a moment. Be prepared to plug your ears.”
“Is that Dermot chattering at you?” Hallgerdur said. “I can tell by the way you bend your ear toward the earbud. Hello, Dermie! Hello! Can you hear this? Your girlfriend—“
“I’m not his girlfriend,” I hissed.
“—She will be incapacitated in a minute or two. But you, my dear, dear Dermie—you will be dead in just a few seconds.”
“Ignore her,” Dermot said. Then he made a weird grunt in my earphone. “What the hell is that?“ he said. Something mechanical was talking in the background. “A clown. It’s a damn clown. And—”
There was a click, then a buzzing and a thump, and at the same time came the loud, shattering percussion of an explosion. It rattled the doors of the bowling alley. A very big bomb had gone off across the street.
“Dermot?” I said. “Dermot. Answer me. Dermot!”
My earbud was dead.
“And thus ends the League.” Hallgerdur made a faux sniff. “It is a grandly satisfying feeling to terminate my former employer and lover at the same time. Two birds with one explosive device. Though I’ll miss Dermot’s sad, disappointed eyes. He was especially sad and disappointed when I shot him.”
Hallgerdur was very obviously wanting to get under my skin. And it had worked, because that Fang anger was rising up from my guts, making me want to swing and scratch and bite. Damn the consequences.
“I am going to kill—”
“If you move, you’re dead.” Hallgerdur made a tiny circling motion with the gun. “This is how it will go from here, Amber Fang. You will put out your hands and be manacled. And we’ve brought along a dog muzzle—well, a vampire muzzle really—to prevent bites. Then we’ll package you up and travel to an unnamed and unknown destination. That’s the best-case scenario. The other way for this to unfold is for you to make a sudden move and me to send a diamond-tipped bullet through your head. I prefer option two because we won’t have to bother with the manacles or the niceties. We’ll just package you up with Band-Aids on either side of your head. Please, please make a move.”
I tensed my leg muscles. Began to crouch, but every micro-movement was followed by the slightest adjustment in that pistol. She couldn’t miss from that distance. So I gradually straightened and took a deep breath.
I slowly raised my arms for the manacles.
7
Cry Baby Cry
Bulldozer stepped ahead, but approached from an angle so that Hallgerdur had a direct line to my forehead. He grabbed my hands and jerked them toward him with one meaty paw. His other hand pulled a large set of chromium manacles from his belt. I was certain they’d been tested against vampire strength. And once they were clicked closed, I’d have lost any chance to escape.
He clicked one over my left wrist so tightly that it pinched my skin. These were not modern-day-sensitive-new-age-jailor-approved! They were going to hurt. A lot. I could tell by the glare in Bulldozer’s eyes that the second manacle would be even tighter.
I also spotted the curling of an octopus tentacle tattoo that wrapped around his neck. I
t was a carbon copy of the one that had decorated Grigory. So this beefy gentleman was Russian, too. Maybe he and Grigoriy had gone to the same tattoo parlor.
“Grigory tasted like vodka,” I said. Bulldozer stiffened slightly and looked directly into my eyes. Yes, there was now a deep rage boiling inside him. I love making humans mad.
“You von’t anger me,” he said, somewhat angrily.
“Was Grigory your friend? Your buddy? Or your lover?” A cheap shot, I know. I don’t really care which human has sex with which other human—I only care which ones have sex with me. Oh, and how humans taste. The rest is none of my business. But I wanted to make him mad and thought a little homophobic slur might help.
“You. Vill. Not. Anger. Me,” he repeated. But the muscles had bunched up along his neck. It was like watching a bull spotting a red cape.
Ugh! I couldn’t think of any more clever taunts. Thanks, brain! This man was obviously tough and strong, and I wasn’t certain I could out-wrestle him. Of course, there was also Hallgerdur lurking behind him with her diamond-tipped death.
“Do your job, Alexei,” she commanded.
Then inspiration struck. “He cried as he died,” I said. “Wept like a little baby. Like a sissy girl. Like a ballet dancer in The Nutcracker Suite. Like—“
Bulldozer slapped me. It was like being slapped by a giant holding a jumbo jet. My teeth rattled, my face burned, and my consciousness was almost knocked into next week.
But the slapping movement had brought him a half-inch to his right and he was now blocking Hallgerdur’s line of fire.
He had also forgotten to click the second manacle in place.
Which left me free to punch him.
In the privates.
My fist bounced off. Ouch! Iron balls? No, he was wearing some sort of protection there. Damn, it hurt! But the blow angered him further and he swung back to slap me again. Which gave me enough of an opening to set my feet and shove him hard.
There was a pfft and a bullet shot through his left arm and perforated my lower shoulder. The wound was enough to sting and burn, but it didn’t stop me—the bullet hadn’t hit bone. Nothing could slow Bulldozer’s momentum—he smacked into Hallgerdur, knocking her to the ground.
