I expected more fleets of Nancharm flying saucers, but none arrived. Explosions lit far up in the sky. What was going on?
The light kept approaching and was now a half-mile away. The emerald bubble floated over the rolling, vegetated terrain. Our two Nancharm guards skated to the edge of the apron and raised their arms to point the attachments at the light. I had the impression of two squirrels baring their teeth at an oncoming freight train.
“If the Nancharm are dead meat,” I said, “we are screwed.”
“Let’s not underestimate ourselves,” Carmen replied in a flat tone. “We’ll let Phaedra do that.” She glowered and squinted at the light. “She’s going to blast her way in.”
“How?”
“Her minions. She’s going to use them as suicide bombers.”
I had to consider that a moment before it sank in. Phaedra was even more diabolical and depraved than what I thought was possible.
The light was now close enough that I could recognize her glowing figure in the center of the green bubble. She stood on a platform on an alien tricycle tractor, an elephant-like creature at the controls. The bubble must be a force shield. Six more figures crowded beside Phaedra and the driver inside the bubble. Was the driver Wah-zhim? A hunch told me that it wasn’t Blossom. If it was Wah-zhim, why help Phaedra? What was going on? I thought Blossom was going to help us escape.
Giant electric arcs cracked from the Nancharms’ tridents. The arcs dazzled my eyes and their heat spanked my face. They zigzagged toward the bubble and splattered clouds of sparks where they made contact. Phaedra and her crew kept approaching. The arcs looked strong enough to slice through an aircraft carrier and here they had no effect.
I waited for the Nancharm to let loose another volley but they kept quiet. Their armor suits began to vibrate, then shook like stockpots boiling over. The Nancharm flicked their arms and their weapons clattered to the pavement. They desperately twisted their helmets to yank them off.
Yellow froth seeped from the helmet collars, the shoulder sockets, their wrists, and pooled underneath their bodies. The shiny armor panels turned blue like the chrome of overheated exhaust pipes. Smoke vented from between the panels. Sections popped loose and clanged to the ground. Clouds of smoke roiled from inside. Phaedra had found a way to cook the Nancharm within their armor. Drifting smoke brought the sweet, sickly smell of charred cotton candy.
A tremor of panic wiggled down my spine. I hoped Moots wasn’t one of the guards.
The bubble rolled closer. Phaedra shimmered like she was a celestial being in a religious painting. The six vampires waited with her, three men and three women, all dressed in black with bulky leather jackets.
A sleek, tapered object fell from the sky and landed on the apron between the two incinerated guards. I thought it was an artillery shell until it broke apart to release dozens of hand-sized winged robots. They flocked together and swirled in front of the bubble.
The bubble stopped a hundred meters from us. One of the female vampires pushed through the bubble’s membrane and once clear, sprinted directly into the flying robots. They swarmed over her, clumping to her arms, head, and shoulders. She staggered under their weight and dropped to the pavement.
An explosion engulfed the robots. Carmen and I ducked to avoid the cascade of debris.
Smoke wafted from a crater in the pavement where the vampire had been. Had the robots blown her up? Or had the vampire blown them up?
Phaedra’s forward progress answered that question. Just as Carmen had announced, Phaedra’s macabre arsenal did include vampire suicide bombers.
The bubble tractor rolled over the blasted section of pavement and halted again, less than fifty meters away. I raised the magnum and drew a bead on Phaedra. One quick shot and the battle ended here. If my bullet penetrated the force shield.
Waves and waves of anguish flooded my mind. Blinded with pain, I crumpled to the balcony.
Carmen hugged me and propped me upright. The pain lifted. She quivered as if in the grip of a fever.
As I groped at the railing I asked, “What’s happening?”
“Phaedra’s using her mind powers on me.”
My vision cleared enough to see a second vampire, this one male, push out of the bubble. I was too woozy for a shot at him or Phaedra. He sprinted toward the building and from our vantage on the balcony, disappeared from view.
A loud blast shook the building. When the smoke cleared, the bubble advanced through a fan of scattered rubble.
I shouted, “She’s blown a hole in the wall.”
Carmen sighed, and the strain eased from her face. Phaedra must’ve shifted her attention to control another of her minions. Now it was my turn to prop Carmen.
I scooped the revolver from where I had dropped it on the balcony. We raced downstairs as best we could with Carmen hobbling beside me. Smoke from the second suicide bomber fouled the hallway. Electric arcs crackled in the main bay where the Nancharm guards were in futile combat against Phaedra.
Jolie beckoned us to the kitchen. The chalices waited behind her. Juanita brandished a chef’s knife and Irsan a pair of Molotov cocktails made from emptied bottles of olive oil. Had to admire their spunk.
The sound of the electric arcs died, replaced by the clanging of armor plates falling apart. Carmen’s eyes cut toward the bay, and I read the message in them. Phaedra was moving in for the kill.
We were on a gangplank that kept shrinking beneath our feet. Though my kundalini noir sputtered in anxiety overload, for the sake of our morale I put on a mask of determination and defiance.
Jolie drew a .45 and flicked off the safety. “What do you think, Felix?”
I surveyed our merry little band of forsaken humans, four mortals and three vampires. The only plan that came to mind was, “Fall back to the pond. We’ll have clearer fields of fire.”
“Make our stand there?” Toby asked. “Like the Texans at your Alamo?”
“I hope not,” I replied. “The Texans lost.”
***
Chapter Thirty-four
Toby stayed by my side, his face fixed into a scowl that looked defiant enough for the both of us. Jolie herded the other chalices out of the kitchen and into the dining room.
A hum echoed in my brain. Phaedra was trying to put the whammy on me.
Carmen staggered against the sink counter. Her complexion curdled into a sickly green pallor, and her eyes dimmed behind a nauseous haze. She and Phaedra were in a knock-down psychic brawl, invisible to the rest of us, and my friend looked to be getting the worst of it.
I started to wrap my arm around Carmen’s waist until she raised a hand to reassure me. Her fingers and lips trembled. Her eyes were red with strain. She swallowed again, held her belly as if tortured by cramps, and took baby steps toward the dining room.
Another blast shook the building. The explosion reverberated through my feet and up my legs. Pots and pans clanged and clattered to the kitchen floor. Wine bottles tumbled out of the rack and shattered against the floor, spraying glass fragments and vino.
That had been the third suicide-bomber vampire. Three remained. How far had Phaedra and crew advanced into the facility? Were they in the bedroom or had they already made it to the hallway?
I heard something scramble against the wall between the kitchen and the hall. Question answered.
Toby shouted, “A bomber! A bomber!”
I fired twice at the sound and punched two bullet holes through the wall.
Someone dropped to the floor with a loud thump.
I was about to congratulate Toby for his quick action when another thunderclap shook the world into a blur. A wave of smoke clotted my throat and pricked my eyes. Debris whipped against our bodies and ricocheted off the ceiling and walls. Smoke twisted through a ragged hole about a foot square at the bottom of the wall.
My ears ringing from the blast, I ordered, “Fall back before the next bomber strikes.”
We had to retreat past the dining room, through the
den and to the patio. That would put three walls and their locked doors between us and Phaedra, which was one more than the two bombers she had left. Hopefully this meant that her plan was unraveling, and that we might have a chance of surviving.
I nudged Toby to stay behind me, and we shuffled backwards to the threshold, my pistol trained in the direction of the attack. Light from the overhead panels diffused through the twisting fumes, and shadows comingled in the smelly murk. A shape darkened the bomb hole, and it could only be another vampire crawling through.
“Back, back,” I shouted. We crowded against Carmen.
“No time for that, mate,” Toby replied. He stepped around me and lunged forward.
I had a split-second to decide: grab him or push Carmen back.
I straight-armed her into the den and was reaching for Toby just as he rushed at the vampire.
Who exploded.
The air flashed hot as dragon’s breath. One moment I was in the kitchen and the next, I found myself in the dining room, heaped on top of Carmen. Smoke wafted from our clothes. My skull rang like a bronze bell smacked by a wrecking ball.
Jolie hurdled over us, a .45 in each hand, and emptied her magazines into the sooty vapor, screaming, pistols blazing. Spent cartridges rained on me, the hot brass prickled my skin. No sounds got past the numbing static in my ears.
Pain filled the moment, the hurt surging over me, then diminishing, surging again, then diminishing, every cycle weakening like waves retreating at ebb tide.
I rolled to my feet and helped Carmen up. Toby was gone, blasted to bits of gore. His sacrifice had saved us.
The door to the kitchen closed behind us and shrank. Carmen tore loose from my grip. Her eyes crinkled with hate. She mouthed a command to the others and gestured that we continue to the patio.
Pistols reloaded, Jolie covered our withdrawal. I staggered behind Carmen. Juanita waited outside.
After I had set foot on the patio, I took a moment to gather myself and let my hearing come back. I took stock of the patio, the pond, the garden, and the surrounding walls, seeing it not as landscape but as military terrain. We could take positions in the garden at the left and right of the pond and catch Phaedra and her surviving minions in a crossfire.
But what if we were playing into her hands? Her attack had methodically pushed us farther and farther back, so maybe it was her plan to corner us by the pond.
I scanned upward in the hopes that Blossom was coming to our rescue, but the sky was clear of spaceships.
We were trapped. If we scaled the walls and made it to open ground, Phaedra would pick us off one by one. With no good choices, our predicament made my chest tighten until it ached.
Carmen plopped into a patio chair. Her normal color had returned and her face appeared relieved. Phaedra must’ve backed off the psychic attack. She, like us, needed to regroup after this last skirmish.
Carmen’s eyes lifted to me and she offered a haggard smile. “You okay?” Her voice sounded like it came from the far end of a long tunnel.
“I’ve been better.”
I thought about Toby. I supposed this was the second time he wanted to die here. But this time he was a hero, and for that, I was grateful.
I let the sadness wash though me. A eulogy would have to wait. Our best memorial to him would be to kill Phaedra.
Jolie stared at the door leading into the patio. “Phaedra came here for a fight, let’s push it back in her face.” Jolie glanced at Carmen. “Are you up for a counter attack?”
Carmen rose from her chair. “I’ll do what I can.”
Jolie and I faced the patio door. I topped off the revolver with the speed loader in my other pocket. Guns ready, we both advanced, one resolute step at a time. All we needed were jangling spurs and a soundtrack from a Sergio Leone spaghetti western.
The plan wasn’t sophisticated. Carmen would run interference with a mind shield while Jolie and I moved into firing position.
Once through the door and into the den, Jolie and I separated to advance in alternating bounds toward the dining room. Our fangs and talons extended to combat length. I had my pistol up, finger on the trigger. Jolie held both pistols before her like the pincers of a scorpion.
Foreign thoughts pierced my mind. Phaedra trying to harpoon our psyches.
Hold her off, Carmen.
I covered Jolie when she proceeded through the door into the dining room. Then it was her turn to cover me. A strange quiet filled the space. The scritch of our shoes on the floor and the rustle of our clothes sounded loud as a garbage truck emptying a dumpster.
A deafening crackle ripped the silence. My arm hairs tingled from a rush of static electricity, and my nostrils twitched at the acrid smell of ozone.
We halted at the threshold to the kitchen and the door opened to let us see inside. The crackling noise grated my ears.
A white flame, bright as the sun, waggled along the wall beside the far door, gushing smoke and leaving a smoldering gap snaking behind it. The flame circumscribed a rough semi-circle around the hole the suicide bomber had made earlier. The flame reached the floor and the section of wall fell toward us with a smash and a cascade of smoke.
A vampire marched through the opening and into the kitchen, a female holding one of the Nancharm’s lightning bolt tridents. Her hands smoldered where she clasped the weapon, sparks crackling around her fingers from the intense electrical discharge that charred her flesh. Jaw clenched, she strained to keep from dropping the trident. Phaedra must’ve had a vice-grip on her will. Phaedra didn’t need suicide bombers to smash through the walls. She was saving her last pair of explosive-laden stooges to use as two-legged precision-guided artillery.
A green glow suffused the kitchen’s smoky pall. Phaedra’s bubble tractor rolled behind this vampire. The second vampire waited inside the bubble.
I stared, transfixed by this spectacle of both nightmarish and supernatural beauty. My kundalini noir quivered like the tail of a rattlesnake. My fangs pushed to such lengths they pinched my gums. I slipped into a feral, murderous trance. I would empty the Colt magnum at Phaedra and charge forward to shred with tooth and claw.
A keening sound echoed in my head and I couldn’t pull the trigger.
Give it up, Felix. There’s only one way this will end. Me … using your skull for a soup bowl.
Jolie knocked me aside and trained her .45 at Phaedra. But the vampire with the trident leaned into the bullet.
I ducked behind the doorway and covered my ears. The vampire exploded and I bounced on the floor. Dust choked the air. Jolie lay sprawled on the debris-covered carpet. She blinked, coughed smoke, and shouted, “Take the shot. Take the motherfucking shot!”
I rose to a knee and aimed the revolver. The circumference of Phaedra’s bubble sharpened in the clearing dust. I aligned the pistol at its center, but the keening sound returned to lash my nerves, becoming louder, louder, louder until I fought to keep from tossing the gun aside and grabbing my ears and screaming in pain.
Someone bounded over me, heading toward Phaedra.
It was Irsan, a lit Molotov cocktail in each hand. He cocked one back. It arced from his hand and splattered against the green bubble, exploding. He was drawing his other hand back to hurl when the tractor lurched forward. At the instant the bubble force field touched Irsan, he screamed and his body sizzled, crumbling into burning pieces.
His death had bought time for Jolie to seize my collar and yank me to my feet. Her tortured grimace mirrored mine as Phaedra flayed us with a bullwhip of psychic juju.
We stumbled back through the den and emerged onto the back patio, smoke and dust sloughing from our bodies.
Juanita and Cassie had Carmen’s arms hoisted across their shoulders. She stood weak-kneed between them. A sheen of sweat glistened on her brow. Her normally full lips had thinned to a pale rind around her mouth. Veins pulsed on her temple and neck. I feared that Phaedra would make Carmen’s head blow apart like a watermelon stuffed with TNT.
Wit
h the Nancharm all but vanquished, Toby and Irsan dead and Carmen on the ropes, we were riding the express elevator to hell.
***
Chapter Thirty-five
I surveyed our tiny perimeter and calculated our odds.
Not good.
I reflected on all the soldiers sent to fight on faraway lands never to return. Fallen souls swept into the gutter of history. Spartan hoplites. Roman legionnaires. Viking raiders. French Foreign Legion paratroopers. My army comrades who died in ones and twos in the tumbled, back alleys of Iraq.
The sky above D-Galtha receded to infinity, reminding me that I was so very far from home. Should Phaedra win and I find myself at the veterans’ reunion in Valhalla, when the toastmaster asks who came the longest distance, I was sure I’d win that prize.
A wash of bitter bile soured my mouth. I ground my teeth to fight the rancid taste.
The battle wasn’t over yet. I still hadn’t fallen. If I had to die, I’d perish gloating over Phaedra’s corpse. Somehow. Some way. I clenched the revolver. To paraphrase Charlton Heston: From my cold, undead hands.
Though my mind was free of psychic probing, I knew it was because Phaedra was biding her time, husbanding her strength, studying the angles, honing her scheme. She had one suicide-bomber vampire left. And she could manipulate him to use whatever Nancharm weapons remained handy before ordering him to charge and blow himself up.
Juanita and Cassie huddled together like chickens waiting to get quartered and shrink wrapped. Jolie’s eyes scrunched in bitter defiance. Carmen …
Carmen … I wasn’t sure what I saw in her expression. Confusion? Anger?
A surge of bubbles in the pond tore my attention from Carmen. The water agitated and a yellow metallic cylinder wide enough to park a VW Beetle broke through the rippling surface. The cylinder was sheathed with rectangular windows and it extended to a height of thirty feet. Our sanity had been so mangled by Phaedra’s manic assault that none of us acted surprised.
A door in the cylinder swung open and a flat beam of light connected the threshold to the edge of the pond. Moots appeared, and she slid from the cylinder across the bridge of light. She carried a brassy contraption that looked like a cross between a pistol and a bugle. If it was a weapon, I hoped it was at least the Nancharm version of a Desert Eagle .50 caliber. Then again, Phaedra had wiped out their flying saucers so Moots’ gun may have been nothing more than a lucky rabbit’s foot.
Rescue From Planet Pleasure Page 21
