Librarian. Assassin. Vampire_Amber Fang_Book 3_Revenge

by Arthur Slade

  There was a set of large French doors ahead of me. The glass in them had all been blown out and they were hanging on their hinges. They seemed to lead into the open air, but when I reached them, I discovered it was a balcony big enough to host a royal wedding.

  There were marble statues, some of them recently made headless, and about twenty stone tables and benches. Two had been blown to pieces. My mother was crouched behind one halfway down the balcony, swinging her arms back and forth, bringing down black-clad security guards left and right. At the far end of the balcony was Anthony Zarc, surrounded by an impressive security detail. They had all apparently been doing their best to hold off Mom.

  She dispatched the final two guards in front of her, and then jumped out of the way as a grenade hit the ground and pulverized the table she’d been hiding behind.

  “Mom!” I shouted. “I’m coming!”

  She didn’t pause. She leapt from one table to another and, in an awe-inspiring move, came down between two guards, nails out on either side of her so that she sliced through their spines. The guards fell over, jerking as they went.

  Well, that’s something I’d have to practice.

  Apparently her moral caveats had all been set aside for today.

  Anthony Zarc was looking upwards and it dawned on me he was expecting help from above. So far the sky was clear.

  I dashed across the long balcony. Now the ZARC guards had to choose between me and Mom as targets. That meant she’d only have to dodge half the number of bullets.

  I soon discovered I’d be dodging the other half. A spray of hot lead struck the stone at my feet, sparking and spraying pellets of rock across my body. I rolled out of the way, hid behind another stone table for a moment to catch my breath. Then it dawned on me that I wasn’t safe there, and I leapt ahead just as an RPG hit behind me and exploded.

  But I was in contact with the enemy now, coming down hard on two guards, knocking the guns out of their hands and smashing their heads into the stone floor. Not as impressive as Mom’s move, but it worked.

  Well, except for the third guard. He was pointing his gun at me and seemed to be relishing the moment. “I’ve got her!” he shouted.

  He didn’t relish the crossbow bolt that went through his arm. His gun fired, but thankfully, only ricocheted off the wall. One snap kick later and he was out cold.

  Mom was working her way along the other side, guards flying with each impact of her fists. I couldn’t believe how quickly she could move! Anger was written across her face. She was unstoppable.

  But now Anthony Zarc had retreated to near the edge of the balcony and a black helicopter was drifting down from above. Silent as a gliding bird. I didn’t even know how that was scientifically possible.

  “NO!” my mother screamed.

  I jumped closer, both of us converging on the last bastion of ZARC guards. But there were too many to fight our way through in time. It was clear Anthony Zarc would get away.

  A rope was lowered and he pulled it down and clamped it to his belt. He still looked perfectly calm. He gave his pilot the thumbs up.

  I skidded to a stop. Searched around. There had to be something the right size and the perfect shape. I spotted a baseball-shaped chunk of stone.

  I threw it with all my might. The kind of throw meant to kill the batter.

  It went right through the cockpit window and might have gone through the pilot, too, because the helicopter began to swing back and forth. It clipped the side of the balcony, the rotors snapped, and with a screeching roar, it toppled over the edge.

  Zarc was still attached to the plummeting metal beast. He reached for his belt but was too late. He was snapped backwards toward the wall.

  My mother leapt the last few yards, caught up to him in mid-air, sliced the rope, and he fell to the ground.

  The helicopter made a nice big exploding sound a couple of seconds later.

  I took out the last guard and kept running toward Mom and Zarc.

  I heard him say, “You saved me. After all our conversations, you see me as an equal. A friend. You—”

  Mother slashed him with her razor-sharp nails. And then she slashed him again. And slashed and slashed and slashed and slashed.

  “You’ll. Never. Touch. Me. Ever. Again.”

  I had to look away. Because she just wasn’t stopping.

  Then, eventually, she did.

  I came over, not glancing at the mess she’d left at her feet. “It’s me, Mom. You’re okay.” I helped her up. She was shaking, and despite the gore spattered across her, I hugged her. “It’s all done now, Mom. Don’t let go. It’s done.”

  Dermot, Derek, and Stephanie joined us, but kept a few feet away. I guess the sight of my mother was enough to ward them off. Or else they just wanted to give us a bit of space.

  “I don’t like what I’ve become,” Mom whispered. I thought I spotted tears in her eyes. “I’m not the same. Not the same.”

  “No,” I said. “You adapted. Became what you needed to be to survive. And believe me, you’re safe now. Safe.”

  It was immediately proven to be a lie.

  Because Dad was suddenly there, only a few yards away, his eyes open, the bolt still in his heart. And he was somehow floating about a foot off the ground, coming straight at us like a missile.

  30

  You Chose Her

  I did have time for an odd thought: why didn’t he take the crossbow bolt out? It must be uncomfortable.

  Then he slammed into us, knocking me partly away from Mom and driving her back toward the edge of the balcony. I managed to hold onto her hand and found myself pulled along.

  Dad fell to the ground, bounced several times, and was still, but a shape had been directly behind him.

  My sister. Patty. She had used his body as a battering ram, knocking aside Dermot, Derek, and Stephanie. And now Patty drove herself directly into Mom, shouting, “You chose her over me!”

  Both of them went over the balcony.

  Which pulled me right to the edge. I still had a hold of Mom’s hand. I dug into the parapet with my free hand and held on tight. Mom was swinging at the end of my arm, Patty holding onto her, frothing at the mouth as she pushed herself back and forth trying to loosen our mother from my grip.

  The momentum caused my nails to slip on the stone. I glanced over my shoulder to see that Dermot and the others were only now getting up. I hadn’t realized how far away they were from us. They would never get here in time.

  “You can’t hold both of us,” Mom said. “You have to let go, Amber.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, let go, Amber!” Patty shouted. “She loved you more. Let her go!”

  I was slipping farther and farther, my boots dragging along the stonework. I dug in even harder but couldn’t stop myself from slipping slowly over the edge.

  We nearly fell to our deaths. But I managed to reach back with my free hand and grab the stone balustrade. The only thing holding us now was the strength of my fingernails.

  “Let us go, Amber,” Mom said. “You have to. You only have a second or two before we all fall. It’s for the best. It’s a clean slate. You can find the other ethical pods.”

  “I’m not letting you go!”

  “Then I’ll make the decision for you,” she said. And she dug her nails into my wrist. Blood began to pour out. “Let go, Amber. Let go!”

  But I didn’t. Then she hit something in my hand—a nerve—and my fingers snapped open, and for a moment she and Patty seemed to float in the air.

  Then they fell.

  “Not on my watch!” Dermot shouted. And before I could react, he was over the side, diving like an archangel, his crappy wings folding out. He arced into the fog below and all three of them disappeared.

  “Dermot!” I shouted. “Damn you!”

  But there was no sign of him, my mom or Patty, no matter how hard I stared. Five seconds passed. Then ten.

  A hand grabbed my wrist and Stephanie and Derek pulled me up to safety. S
till, I leaned over the balustrade, staring.

  “You really should get away from the edge,” Stephanie said. Her hand was on my shoulder. She gave it a gently squeeze. “It’s done.”

  Then a dark shape appeared in the fog and looped up.

  Dermot. With Mom in his arms. He was flying madly. He only had a wing and half, and still was managing to control it. He gave us a thumbs up and grinned.

  And then smacked directly into the wall.

  31

  Nevermore

  My mother reacted first. She reached out and grabbed the stone wall of the fortress with her nails, and between her and Dermot using his exoskeleton hands, they were able to hang on. And bit by painstaking bit, they climbed up.

  It was nerve-wracking watching them. One missed hand hold and they’d plummet to their deaths. But Mom and Dermot continued to cooperate edging so slowly up the wall.

  Derek tied a rope to the leg of a stone table and tossed the end over. Then he and Stephanie worked hard to pull Mom and Dermot the rest of the way up. I helped with my left hand. Mom had done a rather good job of mangling my right.

  But eventually, they were both at the edge of the balcony, and I grabbed onto Dermot and pulled them both to safety.

  “Don’t do that again,” I rasped. “Don’t you ever, ever do that again.” I wasn’t certain which of them I was talking to.

  “I don’t think I could if I tried,” Dermot said. There really wasn’t much left of his wings. Even his exoskeleton was on its last legs—it kept grinding and sparking with each move. He pressed a button, and it began to unfold off of his body.

  I wandered over to my father. He was very, very dead. If the side wound and crossbow bolt hadn’t been enough, Patty’s using him as a battering ram trick had broken his neck. “Do we just leave him here?” Derek asked.

  “A burial in the air,” I said. Derek and Stephanie and I guided him to the edge. Mom watched without saying anything, just hugging herself.

  We didn’t speak any words of peace or blessing. We just let him fall. Perhaps Dad would be hidden in the snow forever.

  Mom didn’t look good; in fact, she was about three shades of awful. My hand continued to bleed from where she’d sliced it, but I still put my arm around her and we made our way to the elevator. The castle seemed to be deserted. Maybe the guards and other staff had fled fortress ZARC through some secret means.

  The elevator was quiet—everyone was quiet—as we went down, down, down forever. At one point the sun began to shine through the glass window.

  Then the door opened and we stepped out onto the snow road that lead away from the fortress. After a few minutes of walking, I heard a small crackling sound. All of us turned back to look upon the castle.

  It had become a vision of bright fireworks and giant explosions. Again, it reminded me of the palace at the start of any Disney movie. Except, within less than a minute, it had crumbled and fallen down the mountainside.

  And Castle Zarc existed nevermore.

  32

  A Lady and a Vampire

  Dermot found us a place to stay outside of Zurich. It was an old safe house in the woods that had been used by the League on several occasions—a giant log cabin with about twelve rooms. The building was far enough up a mountainside that it felt almost like wintertime at night. Dermot brought in a quiet, unassuming doctor to look at all of our various wounds, and she pronounced that my hand would heal in time. My other wounds had mostly healed. She even gave Dermot some ointment for his burned skin.

  I slept for the first two days in my room. My mother slept in hers. On the third day, I awoke to find that Derek and Stephanie had left without saying goodbye. I felt a little miffed about that, then chastised myself. How many mercenaries see parting as a sweet sorrow?

  I had a few conversations with Dermot, but he mostly kept to himself and his laptop. I wasn’t certain what he was checking on. Perhaps he was just being certain there wasn’t any sort of blowback coming our way.

  Mom was quiet. She would go on long walks in the woods and come back still looking a bit—I don’t know—lost. Like she hadn’t quite found her place. We talked about nothing too deep. Maybe there was just too much for both of us to process. She had lost a husband and I had lost a father. And I was pretty certain Patty was dead. Though Dermot had scanned the area with a rented drone and wasn’t able to find her body.

  I shoved that little detail out of my mind.

  In the afternoon, Dermot came into the living room where I was reading Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage. There was a collection of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour books in the cabin—and no other reading. I guess military-types prefer westerns.

  “What do you think Hector meant when he said he couldn’t find himself?” Dermot asked.

  I shuddered. Then held myself still, hoping he’d missed my reaction. “I guess he just went crazy.”

  “Yes. I hope that’s it,” he said. Hector was still burning a hole in my pocket. A little marble of guilt that I carried with me wherever I went. I wanted to tell Dermot about my experience with Hector, but I knew he’d talk me out of my plan.

  And I had promised to release the AI. I had to keep my promise.

  After the first week, I was feeling rather healthy. My right hand only hurt if I used it too much. And my mother was still in a bit of a morose state, but at least was more social. Well, as social as a reader gets. She would sit by the fire, drinking hot chocolate and reading her own Zane Grey book.

  Sometimes it was almost as if those three years of being apart hadn’t happened. But if I looked closely, I could see the time had changed her. Toughened her.

  And made her distant.

  “I’m going to go to bed early,” she said. And she made her way to her room at the far end of the cabin. I wondered if she chose that room so she could easily sneak away in the middle of the night without us noticing.

  “Is she acting the same as she used to?” Dermot whispered.

  I took a sip of my wine. “She’s distant. Her thoughts are distant. I think she just needs time.”

  “She’s barely said two words to me. Though she did thank me for saving her.”

  “Yes. I bet that was hard for her to say. She doesn’t exactly trust humans.”

  “And do you?”

  “I trust you,” I said. Maybe I was getting soft in my old age, but I didn’t add any sarcasm.

  That got a grin from him. And I couldn’t help but notice that he’d put on a few more pounds and wasn’t as sickly looking. In fact he was almost healthy. He’d given himself a brush cut, but it was clearly his hair, even the places where it’d been blasted away, was beginning to grow back properly. I guess even his hair was augmented.

  “I have a bit of an offer,” he said. “You don’t have to accept it.”

  “Oh, tell me more. I’m intrigued.”

  “I think we work well together. We’re…we’re a good team. Really we are.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself of something, too. “Anyway, I wonder if you’d consider perhaps joining up to do more missions. To make a sort of alliance.”

  “Can two people make an alliance?”

  “You know what I mean. To work together and maybe even reform the League. You still have to eat every month, right? And there are so many, umm, deserving meals out there. We could really make a difference in the world.”

  He sounded like such a do-gooder! I honestly didn’t know what to say. Part of me wanted to jump right in. But another part of me was still aching from the wounds and body blows I’d taken over the last few days. “Let me think on it,” I said.

  He nodded. There was something cute about him asking me to join him. Almost like it was a boy asking a girl out on a date. Well, a date that involved a lot of killing. I did notice that he had a bit of a warm healthy glow to him now, too.

  I had a glow, too. Or was it the wine I’d just finished? I wanted to be closer to his warmth.

  What the hell, I thought. And I went across the
room to where he was sitting. He put out a hand as if he was afraid I was coming to tickle or slap him, but I sat down next to him, reached in, and actually hugged Dermot.

  I thought it might end there because he really didn’t respond other than to say, “Oh, this is nice.” He was warm. And I was beginning to feel warmer feelings in other places and maybe he was, too, because he suddenly leaned my way and without saying a word, he kissed me.

  And from there it led to something I could only call an amorous adventure that involved me leading him back to my room.

  But I am a lady and a vampire and I don’t share details.

  33

  The Details

  So I won’t mention the toe-curling hours of pleasure. Nor will I mention that he was augmented in more ways than one. Nor will I wax on about how he actually enjoyed talking before and after the act.

  Not that the act ever seemed to be finished. It was all one long tsunami of pleasure.

  All of that information is a secret that I’ll keep until my dying day.

  34

  That Unbound Feeling

  I don’t know exactly what our tryst meant, and we didn’t talk about it in the morning. And I certainly didn’t mention it to my mom. Though the first thing she did when she came out of her room was to give me a disapproving look that could have melted pavement. She grabbed a cup of coffee and went back to her room.

  At about noon, Dermot went into the nearest town for groceries and more coffee. Leaving me alone with Mom. I looked down the hall to her room. Part of me wanted to go and talk to her. But I didn’t think now was the right time. Soon, though, we would have to have a long discussion about our future.

  I also knew that talking to her would mean that I would just be avoiding that one last act I had to do. So I went back to my room and fired up the ancient computer that had perhaps been there since the ‘90s. It worked, though, and I was able to connect to the wireless internet. I clicked on the clunky keyboard and pointed and clicked with the mouse until I’d entered the dark web.

  Then I pulled out the marble in my pocket and held it up. I wasn’t certain what substance it was made of—certainly not glass. I wondered if I could just squeeze it to dust between my fingers.