by Arthur Slade
“It is a rather large compound.” Dermot was looking from one side of the fortress to the other. “It shouldn’t take much longer than a few weeks to search it. Hope you brought some granola bars.”
Apparently, he was healthy enough for sarcasm.
“Point taken,” I said. “You have any suggestions?”
“Well…” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll download the schematics for the original Neuschwanstein Castle. We can assume it follows the same pattern. That’ll give us a helping hand.” He tapped at a few buttons. “There.” He took a moment to flip through the images. “By the way, have you checked Elysium recently?” he asked.
I shook my head and got my own phone out. We were beginning to look like a table of teenagers texting each other. But I was able to access the dark web and clicked my way to Elysium. A message was waiting for me.
S.O.S., it said. It had been left only five minutes earlier.
Agnes?
There was five-second wait, then: They didn’t find my phone. In prison cell. Low battery.
That seemed incredibly amateurish for them not to search her. And I didn’t want to ask exactly how she’d hidden it. Or maybe she looked so innocent they decided not to do a proper pat down.
Where are you? I asked.
In cell block. East dungeon.
There’s an actual dungeon?
Yes. My prison cell # is 9000. Your mother’s cell is here. Very close. I can show you.
Dermot was looking over my shoulder. “She’s still alive? And that’s her prison cell number? How many cells do they have?”
“It is a big place.” But the number was incredibly high.
Dermot pointed at my phone. “It’s curious you can reach her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the signal bar on your phone.”
There were no bars. I was getting no signal at all. Yet she was communicating with me.
How are you communicating? I asked. No cell service here.
It’s all cell service. Wi-Fi forever.
I’m not certain what that answer meant.
Get me. Come and get me. They are losing patience with me. They executed the others. Right here. In front of me. Hurry! The Returns are launching a mission. Today. If you come now they will coordinate their rescue incursion. Come now, Amber. I need you. Your mother needs you. I think they’re torturing her. Right now. Then she sent me an image. I thought it would be my mom, and I prepared to recoil in horror. But it was a screen capture of a battery at 1 percent. Battery dying. Save me. Sa
And that was it.
“What does that all mean?” Dermot said. He’d continued to read over my shoulder. “Those librarians are going to try and rescue her?”
“You know as much as I do,” I said. “But the Returns are a tough bunch. And well-trained.” Anthony Zarc and his minions were torturing my mother at this very moment. I couldn’t get that out of my mind. And I was really not that far away from her. “We have to go now,” I said. “Even if that means I go it alone.”
Dermot put his hand on my shoulder. Which hurt because it was metal and nearly pounded me into the ground. “Sorry,” he said. “I really should practice more. But yes, we will all go, Amber. Right now.”
Dad chose this moment to interject with an aggravating laugh. “You’ll all be dead long before you reach the castle,” he said. He was still sitting in the snow, hands behind his back. His voice continued to be slightly muffled by the mask.
I didn’t even want to acknowledge him. He was just trying to throw us off. But Dermot said, “What makes you say that, Martin?”
“Because I am going to kill you,” he said. “Well, except you, Amber. You and your uterus are still too valuable to vampirekind.”
There was something wrong about a father talking about his daughter’s uterus.
“Is this some sort of stupid joke, Dad?” I spat out the words. “I’m tired of your jokes. You don’t scare me.”
“I don’t scare you. Well how about this for a little scare: Kill them.” The last two words were said a bit louder, as though they were a command.
“What the hell are you going on about?” I put my hands on my hips. “Do I have to punch you again?”
“No. My timing was off,” Dad said. “Kill them. Right now.”
There was a quick, hissing sound that I barely registered, then the ground in front of us exploded, snow and shattered rocks spraying my face and eyes, cutting my cheek, and knocking me back towards the edge. I heard a yell and saw Derek and Stephanie falling down, down the side of the cliff. It was too foggy and snowy to see if they hit hard rock or snow. Either way, they were most likely dead. Dermot was still standing there, but the blast had blown his coat into tatters, revealing his metal frame. His body had protected me from the worst of it.
My sister stepped through the force field thingy, a rocket launcher in her hand and a smile on her face. Patty couldn’t have looked any more pleased with herself if she’d tried. It still freaked me out how much she looked like me. Behind her came one, then two, then five, then ten figures in snow gear. Vampires! More vampires than I had ever seen in my lifetime all in one place.
“It’s good to see you, Sis,” Patty said. The gun was still smoking. “And you, too, Dermot. I’ve always wanted to finish my meal.” She quickly brought another rocket grenade up and loaded the gun like an expert.
“How the hell are you even here?” I shouted.
One of the vampires was standing behind Dad. There was a snap and his manacles fell to the ground. He reached up and tore off the mask. “When I stole that phone in Budapest, I may have sent a message to the Grand Council. And they tracked me, just like I tracked you.”
I still couldn’t get my mind around the sudden family reunion. “You were supposed to hit all three of the humans,” Dad said
Patty sniffed derisively. “I guess I should practice more.”
“So this is what’s going to happen,” my father said. “Dermot is going to die. Amber, you’re going to come with us back to the Grand Council and become the saviouress of vampires for all eternity. And your mother will remain in the prison, rotting away or being expertly tortured to death. At least that’s my hope. So, Dermot, if you could step a foot or two away from Amber—we don’t want your body parts splashing all over her, now do we? Be a good little boy and cooperate just this once.”
Patty aimed the RPG at Dermot.
“You’ve forgotten one thing,” Dermot said.
Father rolled his eyes. “And what is that?”
“That the librarians are right behind you.” And he pointed over Dad’s shoulder.
I hoped with all my desperate heart that Dermot was telling the truth. But we paused for a second or two and no one else came out of the snow and fog. “Wow, did you really just try that?” my father said, laughing.
“It was worth the attempt,” Dermot said. He shrugged his metal shoulders. “I’ll step away from Amber.”
“No!” I said.
“There isn’t another choice,” he replied. He took three quick steps to his left before I could move. Patty brought the gun to bear on him.
“Stop it!” Every time I tried to move closer he took a step away.
Then Dermot turned to me. “Say goodbye, Amber,” he said.
“Hell no! I’m not saying goodbye. I just found you.”
“Kill him!” father shouted. “Their inane conversation is driving me nuts!”
“Goodbye,” Dermot said. Then he ran straight toward me, wrapped me up in his metal arms, and we went tumbling derriere over teakettle over the edge and down.
I was swearing the whole way.
18
The Only Way In
His metal arms were almost crushing me to his chest. He reached back with one hand and clapped something on his shoulder. A flapping thing unraveled—at first I thought it was a parachute—but then I saw it was actually wings made of a frame and some sort of synthetic cloth. We h
ad become a glider! A really heavy glider.
“Nice one,” I said. “I had no idea your little suit could do this.”
“I read the manual,” he managed to rasp. “Though I should mention the load-bearing weight of the wings is really only supposed to be one person.”
“Are you saying I’m too fat to fly?”
This got a gargling chuckle out of him.
I glanced past his shoulder to see that my sister was still leaning over the edge. I gave her the finger.
Which might have been a mistake since she was pointing her grenade launcher at us. A microsecond later a hole smacked through Dermot’s right wing. The grenade failed to explode—maybe the wing wasn’t thick enough to set off the detonator. Instead the RPG smashed into the snow and ice below us and made a nice, big, snowy firework display.
Alas, the hole in Dermot’s wing was big enough to seriously mess with our airworthiness. We began to spiral.
“Oh, craptastick,” I said. “I might be sick.”
“Just hold on,” Dermot barked, almost laughing as he struggled to keep the wings in one piece. “This may get a little bit choppy.” He twisted his body until we were flying at an angle away from the cliff walls, but somehow we looped back and were now aiming straight at a giant wall of rock. At this speed, we’d be red splotches on the cliff.
Then, at the last moment, Dermot either got lucky or used all of his skill to make us veer away. We swooped straight down and did a loop—which almost made me throw up—then came down toward the ground. He extended his legs and tried to run along the snow, but we were going at far too great of a speed for him to keep his balance. At one point he lost his grip on me, and I went flying and hit the snow hard. The light suddenly disappeared.
The snow was all around me. I struggled to breath, windmilling my arms desperately trying to dig a way out. I was going to be smothered!
Then I somehow found my feet and stood up. I was waist deep in white stuff. My panic had been for nothing! Dermot was standing a few feet away brushing the snow off his arm.
“Nice flying,” I said.
“My only goal was to be alive at the bottom,” he said. “Oh, and to not pee my pants.”
“Tell me you achieved both goals.”
This got a chuckle out of him.
I glanced over my shoulder. My Pa and Sis were far enough away that they looked like dolls gesticulating at us. But a row of vampires were already scaling down the cliff wall, using their perfectly tough nails for grip. And another group, let’s call them the Olympic vampires, were skiing further along the mountain paths, working their way toward us.
Vampires skiing. Now I’d seen everything.
“We have to get moving,” I said. “We’re going to have some fanged company in a few minutes.”
“Yes, let’s shake a tail,” Dermot said. It always sounded forced whenever he used a colloquialism. He managed to fold one wing perfectly in place. When he tried to close the other one, he snapped off half of it. “Oh, snap,” he said. I didn’t even honor him with an eye roll. He tossed the piece away.
There was no sign of Derek or Stephanie—neither bodies or blood trails. Dermot and I had actually made more distance from the cliff face than I’d first thought. ZARC’s castle was looming above us, and the cable car was really just a short run away. From ground level, the car looked larger than I’d expected. Of course it would be, because they’d used it to haul bricks and weapons and top-secret crap up there.
And vampires to experiment on. Even librarians.
We ran as quickly as possible toward the cable car. Dermot was surprisingly fast in his exoskeleton—I thought he’d sink into the snow, but maybe his feet were big enough to offset that. At any moment, I expected machine-gun fire or even rockets to start coming at us from the guard tower near the cable car station. Someone on the ZARC team must have seen the RPGs that Patty had launched. I expected there to be several guards at the bottom or a cable car full of mercenaries coming down to snuff us out.
But no one fired a shot. And the castle looked, well, deserted. If I hadn’t seen the helicopter earlier, I might have believed no one was actually living there. But someone really should be challenging us—this was the highest fortress in the world with the latest tech guarding it, and the whole place was probably stuffed with SEAL or KGB-trained mercenaries.
But we met only silence as we ran toward the waiting cable car. When we came around the corner of the guard tower, some of the silence was explained: a handful of bodies. Four ZARC guards in black uniforms were littered across the ground.
“Did the vampires already get here?” I asked. I looked left and right, but our pursuers were still a good distance away.
Dermot strode up to the nearest guard—a woman with a square face. He reached out of his exoskeleton with an ungloved finger and touched her neck. “Dead,” he said. “And no sign of injuries.”
They had all been standing on a metal platform that lead to the cable car.
“Who the hell did this?” I asked. I didn’t like murder mysteries and I didn’t happen to bring Miss Marple with me.
“Could it be your librarians?” Dermot asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “But they’re more the tie them up and scold them types. Heck, they even pumped darts into vampires on a catch and release program.”
“Maybe the rules change if one of their own is captured.”
“Yes. That could be. But I’m not convinced. Either way, it’s good news and a lucky break for us.”
Dermot pointed at a shoe a few feet away from the woman’s body. Also, I could now see that her pants had been torn and burnt near the bottom. “Electrocution,” Dermot said. He stepped away from the metal ramp they were on. “Someone put a few thousand volts through them all.”
“With what?” I asked.
Dermot shrugged, which looked odd since his whole frame moved. “Well, we don’t have time to sort it out,” he said. He gestured toward the cable car. “After you.”
I zipped past him and into the car. It was extremely utilitarian inside. There were no chairs, only hooks for tying down equipment. “How does this thing work?” I asked, looking around the back of the vehicle.
Dermot had found the driver’s box at the front. “There’s a stop and start button.” One was red and the other green.
“Then press the green one,” I said.
He did so. The door slid shut and the cable car quietly began to move upwards—so quiet it seemed like magic. We were suddenly zipping along the line and the ground receded. I saw the skiers were racing to the guard station, the snow spraying behind them. And a bit further back, Patty was running with the RPG. But we were far enough away I was pretty certain she’d not get a shot off.
Of course, she could just knock out the cable. I’d have to hope my ovaries mattered a lot to her. And Dad. And all the other bloodsuckers. They wouldn’t want to risk shattering them.
The higher we got, the hazier the ground grew. I took in a few deep breaths. The air was cleaner in here, except for the smell of Dermot’s burnt clothing. It was the first moment of peace we’d had since I’d seen Dermot. I looked across at him. Close up, I could see there was even more reddishness to his skin than I’d thought. His curly hair was mostly burnt off, except for a few patches that stuck out like bushes.
But he was Dermot. I put my hand out and reached through the exoskeleton to touch his shoulder. “Thanks for coming,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”
“There was no other choice,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“That nothing was going to stop me from finding you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
And that’s about all I could come up with. I looked at his hair again. He’d need hours in a beautician shop to be put back together. “You really do look like hell,” I said.
“That’s a compliment coming from you.” His gray eyes were soft, and perhaps a little moist, then he snorted in some air and was all busin
ess again. “What did the message from Agnes say again? That those librarian folks would coordinate their attack with us?”
“They’re called The Returns,” I said. “And maybe they got tired of waiting. That’s why there are dead guards below us.”
“I didn’t see the cable car go up.”
“We were kind of busy trying not to die,” I said.
“They may have arrived a few minutes before we did,” he suggested. “But I’m trained to be observant. For example, here’s an urgent observation: the other cable car is on its way down.”
The twin of our cable car was racing down the cable that ran alongside us.
“Any way to stop it?” I asked. “I have a feeling it’ll be packed with vampires in a few minutes.”
Dermot patted his pockets. “No grenades. I could jump across and try to sabotage it.”
“No. Stay here. We need to get to the castle first. I’m sure everything will fall into place after that.” I sounded way more confident than I felt.
The car went by us and I was relieved to see it was empty. I kept expecting Nazi soldiers to pop their heads up and start firing machine guns at us. Like I said, Mom made me watch that Eastwood movie far too many times.
As we got closer to the castle, I saw we were heading into a large opening about three quarters of the way up the white walls. Though we were no longer in danger from Patty and Dad, ZARC’s defenders would certainly notice that the car was on its way. And it’s not like there was anywhere to hide.
“Get down,” Dermot said. He slammed my back, knocking the wind out of me and making me fall to the floor. He threw himself down beside me.
“What the hell was that—” I started.
The windows smashed as a spray of bullets came through. Glass flew across the compartment, slicing down on us. We had been spotted. Obviously. And Dermot had curled around me, as if to defend me from bullets. “As I said before,” I shouted, “that exoskeleton you’re wearing isn’t bulletproof.”
“No,” he shouted back. “But I have a bulletproof vest on. Do you?”
The shots kept coming, working lower down the compartment. The car was going to be sawed in half. Dermot grunted and I thought he’d been hit. “Just a deflection,” he said. “No wound. At least, I don’t think there’s one.”
