by Andrew Dudek
Chapter 13
Stefanie took a step back, her blue eyes darkening until there was nothing but inky black emptiness. Her skin grayed and her teeth grew and sharpened, but she held her hands out to her sides, palms open. Those black eyes were wide, but with terror, as I pushed the tip of my sword into the hollow of her throat.
“What did you do this girl?”
Vampires have a slew of ways they can bend mortals to their will. The simplest is money: hiring mercenaries, like the guard outside the warehouse. The most dangerous, probably, is enthrallment: overpowering the mind through a psychic connection. When I’d first met Krissy, she’d been under the thrall of a vampire and sent to kill me. The ugliest method of control, though, is their venom. Glands concealed in the roofs of their mouths produce the stuff, which is secreted through the fangs. It’s how they turn people: enough venom in the veins and it overpowers the blood. When enough of the blood is infected with the murky black sludge that is vampire venom, the person becomes a vampire. Small doses give the victim a taste of power—strength, speed, senses—not to mention the intense pleasure that comes with it, but it’s followed by a hangover so intense it can last for days. Amy Vernon moaned softly, her eyes open but not seeing.
“Carver,” Dallas whispered. I could see him looking around nervously, one hand held out in front of his body, fingers spread wide. Green sparks bounced on his fingernails. Four big, trench-coated guys with automatic weapons stood on the landing outside the foreman’s office. “What are you doing?”
“My job,” I said. “A little pest control.”
“It’s alright,” Stefanie said to the guards, and they relaxed a hair. “ Captain, you’re making a mistake. There’s no need for this.”
“Oh, yeah, there is.” I pushed the blade harder into her throat until it broke the skin. The magic in the steel made the vampire’s blood hiss as it bubbled, unnaturally dark, to the surface. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing that she didn’t want me to do.”
“She wanted you to do that to her?” I pointed at the girl sprawled on the couch. Her eyes blinked slowly. There was brownish, smeared blood around the wounds on her throat. They’d been feeding on her. “She wanted to be turned into an all-you-can-drink buffet for you and your friends?”
“It’s not like that,” Stefanie said. “You’re making a mistake.”
“You know,” I said, “a vampire told me that the last time I was in this building. Turned out he was just afraid I’d wreck his plans. Tell me something, Stefanie: What are you afraid of?”
“Of dying because you don’t understand what’s happening!” Her voice echoed in the open, lofty space of the office. “She wanted this. She’s not some common meal—she’s mine!”
“This isn’t a movie,” I said. “I don’t believe in vampires in love.”
“Not love, no. A mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“I see what she’s getting out of the deal,” I said. I nodded at the prone form. “What about you?”
“Magic blood,” Dallas murmured. “You know how vampires get more powerful as they age? They got more tolerant to sunlight, they get better at enthrallment, they get faster and stronger. The blood of magicians accelerates that process.”
“She’s very powerful.” Stefanie winced a little: she’d turned to look when Dallas spoke and the sword had cut a furrow in her throat. “Her blood is…very rich.”
“Ah,” I said. “That’s what this is. You don’t like the way Flavian is running things and you figured you want a little boost of power so you can challenge him for the championship belt.”
“No. I do care for her.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe you are on the up-and-up, and you have some kind of relationship. Either way, you’re a vampire feeding on a human. Until she comes to enough to give me her side of the story, I can’t allow that. I’m taking the girl.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Oh, yeah, I can.” I changed the pitch of my voice to something louder and more official. “I’m placing Amy Vernon under the protection of the Knights of the Round Table.”
“This is for her own good,” Stefanie said. “If you take her from this building…bad things will happen.”
“Yeah, I’m sure her parasite has her best interest at heart.” I sheathed my sword and picked Amy up from the couch in a fireman’s carry. She groaned a little and her eyelids fluttered. I didn’t see anything like understanding in those eyes. “Come on, Dallas.” With the wizard leading the way, the sparks blossoming into full-grown green fireballs, we headed down the stairs. Stefanie and the guards followed.
“Please don’t take her,” the vampire said, over and over.
A few of the drones stood up and folded their arms, but none left their desks. Waiting, I guess, for a command that never came.
Dallas opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk. Just before I followed him out, Stefanie shrieked, her voice high-pitched and terrified.
The moment I crossed the threshold into the broiling sun, a drop of Amy’s blood rolled out of the bite on her thigh. The edges of the wound sizzled, crackled, and churned like rocky seas. The blood floated away from her leg, weightless as a soap bubble, and drifted into the air until it was high above the rooftops. Then it flashed away towards the north, as if had been launched by a slingshot.
“Well,” I said. “That can’t be good.”
We’d gotten Amy more or less comfortable in the back seat. I had a spare pair of basketball shorts in the trunk, and I’d put them on her to cover her groin and legs. She was still out cold. A group of mercenary guards were standing on the sidewalk, watching with their hands on the handles of their automatic weapons, but they didn’t interfere. I guess Stefanie had told them not to pick a fight with the Round Table.
A nightmarish howl pierced the humid afternoon like an air raid siren. The guards pointed their weapons at the sky, searching for a target they expected to come from above.
They never saw the hellhound coming.
It appeared in their midst like a late summer cloud, all three dog’s heads snarling and slavering. The first guard screamed as fangs like spearheads ripped into his torso and savaged his flesh. He didn’t scream long. These guys were professionals. As a unit they circled the dog-demon and opened fire. Bullets ripped into fur and flesh, sending showers of tangerine blood flying, but the dog seemed not to notice. All three heads growled and the dog pounced. It landed on the largest of the mercs, the one who had led us into the warehouse, and went to work on his chest cavity. A courageous merc rushed in to help, brandishing a knife which he buried in one the hellhound’s necks. Another head snaked around to yank the weapon free and spit it at the guard’s feet. Teeth flashed and the man fell to his knees, clutching at what remained of his throat. The three guards who were left opened fire with their assault rifles. A barrage of bullets ripped into the dog as it charged forward, baying like it had scented a rabbit. The guards stood their ground, but they stayed clustered together. So closely clustered, in fact, that when all three of the hellhound’s heads jerked like snapping turtles, each set of jaws closed around a different merc and crushed.
The whole thing had taken thirty seconds.
The hellhound pawed at the ground, two heads sniffing the air while the third ripped into the meat of one of the dead guards. And then its rightmost head landed on me and, I swear to god, those doggy lips drew back in a grin. All three heads began howling or barking, and the hellhound charged.
I leaped into the driver’s seat. Dallas was already in the car, slamming the dashboard and shouting, “Drive, drive, drive!” I pushed my boot on the accelerator and peeled away from the curb.
The door to the warehouse had closed, keeping Stefanie and her people from the hellhound’s wrath.
The barking made the car windows vibrate. The dash shook so violently I thought it might splinter. I chanced a look in the rearview. The hellhound was plowing through parked cars like they were nothing. Metal, plastic,
fiberglass, the frames shattered and melted as the doglike form tore through them. All the time, the barking continued.
We had maybe a minute before we got out of the sphere of isolation provided by the vampires’ bad vibes, and then we’d be speeding through one of the most densely populated spots in the world. The dog was having a hard time getting within striking distance, but it was hanging. I didn’t know how disciplined its killer instinct was. If someone accidentally got between us and the dog, I didn’t know what would happen. We had to let it get closer.
“Take the wheel!” I shouted and jump-crawled into the backseat. Dallas swore loudly and colorfully and heaved his bulk into my seat. The car’s acceleration hiccuped, but then Dallas put his foot on the gas and the ride smoothed.
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t answer, just unrolled a window and drew my knife. “Sorry about this,” I whispered, and pricked Amy’s arm. I twisted the knife so the blood ran down the fuller in the center of the blade, coating the length of the steel. I held the knife out the window. All three of the dog’s heads twisted at the sight, and the barking intensified. The four long legs pumped harder and the demon closed in on us, vaulting over a mail truck like it wasn’t there.
“What are you doing?” Dallas screamed again. “It’s gaining!”
“It’s a hellhound,” I said. “It’s got the scent of Amy’a blood and it won’t stop until it has her.”
“So what do we do?”
“Let it stay close,” I said. “And head for the bridge.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t take that thing over the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“We’re not gonna take it over the bridge,” I said. “Just do it, Dallas.”
Dallas shook his head, but he shut up and focused on driving.
Pedestrians were becoming more and more common as we soared through Brooklyn Heights. Yuppies gasped from the sidewalks and red-brick buildings, staring at the blur of a three-headed dog chasing a forest green Ford as if it were a hare. I shouted out the window at them, “Mind your own business!”
I slid the spine of the knife along Amy’s arm. Blood smeared the blade. I settled back and waited for Dallas to reach the river.
The car shook as Dallas plowed through traffic, leaning on the horn the whole way. He swerved around slow-moving vans, parked cars, and people crossing the streets. He jerked the wheel to head up on the sidewalk, beeping in staccato rhythm, sending people scurrying into the relative safety of a Starbucks. He yelled over his shoulder, “Whatever you’re planning on doing, better get ready to do it.”
The car jerked as one of the dog’s heads scraped against the trunk of the car. There was a screech of tearing metal and I looked back to see the hellhound biting at the trunk. Most drivers were pulling over, miraculously, leaving the ramp comparatively empty as we sped up onto the Brooklyn Bridge. I held my knife out the window, still smeared with Amy’s blood. The three heads howled and focused on the blood so intensely I thought their fiery eyeballs would explode.
I grinned. Let’s hope this works. I flicked my wrist, sending a gusher of blood flying off the blade into the East River. The dog barked, jerked like somebody had yanked on its leash and bounded off to the right. The hellhound landed on the railing at the edge of the bridge, then launched itself into thin air.
There was a colossal splash, followed by a yelping sound like a kicked dog, then nothing.
“YEE-HAW!” I slapped the roof of the car. “It worked!”
“You know that didn’t kill it, right?” Dallas said.
“Running water. It’ll break up the corporeal form. Should take a while for it to reform. Long enough that we can get Amy someplace safe.”
Dallas nodded. “Where to?”
I sighed. The list of places where anybody’d be safe from the hellhound in this city was depressingly short. “Take us back to the office” I looked at Amy Vernon. She hadn’t moved throughout the entire ride, laying motionless on her back, staring sightlessly at the car’s ceiling. For all I could tell, she might as well have been dead.
Chapter 14
“She’s pretty.”
Krissy was standing behind me, in the office’s basement. Amy Vernon, who had finally closed her eyes and drifted into an uneasy sleep, was behind an old chain-link fence. Cotton gauze covered the bite wounds and I’d bandaged the slashes I’d put on her arms. She did look better—her skin was less pale and she no longer looked like a corpse—but still worn out. Her blond hair seemed in danger of shattering into a million pieces, and her breathing was too fast.
“Is she gonna be okay?” Krissy asked.
“Should be.” I turned away from the sleeping girl. “Depending on how much venom’s in her system, she should be awake within a few hours. A day at the most.”
“Are you pissed at me?” Krissy’s tone shifted so abruptly I felt like my head should spin with it.
“What? No. Why would you think that?”
“You’re supposed to be teaching me. And I never see you for more than an hour at a time. You’ve barely showed me how to use a sword.” Krissy’s eyes darted towards the corner of the basement where we kept the blue training mats on the floor. A couple of dull training steels were leaning against the wall. “It’s because of what happened in March, right? Because of Bill.”
I sighed and gritted my teeth. “Krissy. I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Well, when will you want to talk about it? You’re supposed to be teaching me to be a knight, but you keep pawning me off on Earl and Rob, sending me to Atlantic City while you do the real work here by yourself. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed. The others are getting impatient, too.” I opened my mouth to protest, but Krissy was on a roll and she barreled over my arguments. “I’m not learning anything. I want to, but I can’t get through to you. You’re the only person I have a connection with in this city. My parents live a thousand miles away, Earl and Rob treat me like a kid who’s just gonna get in the way. Madison’s nice enough, letting me crash in her apartment, but she doesn’t know how to wield a sword and she doesn’t want to. And then there’s you: the guy who told me he’d train me, the guy whose life I saved in the subway station. The guy I can’t get to notice me.”
Her voice dropped at the last, and I had the feeling that we weren’t just talking about her training anymore.
“I notice you,” I murmured.
“Really? It doesn’t seem like it. I want to learn with you. I want to be with you.”
I shook my head. “Krissy, that’s a bad idea. Not while you’re my page, anyway.”
“What about after? When my training’s done?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t.”
“Of course not.” She scowled. “Not while you’re still in love with the witch.”
“Come on, Krissy,” I said. “That’s not fair.”
“You told me once: Life’s not fair.” She whirled around, a mini-tornado of dusty brown hair and pale skin, and stormed up the stairs.
For a while I’d suspected that Krissy had harbored deeper feelings for me. I had figured it was just a schoolgirlish crush. She’d said it herself: I was the only person in New York with whom she had a real connection. I thought that as she lived here for a while she’d make friends, form a life for herself. On some level, I guess, I had expected that she’d eventually give up her training. It wasn’t that I didn’t think Krissy was cut out to be a knight, but I couldn’t really understand her motivation.
The origin story of almost every Knight was a revenge tale. We’d all lost someone to the supernatural monsters of the world and had dedicated our lives to fighting them. Krissy, though, hadn’t suffered a tragic loss. She hadn’t watched her boyfriend get butchered. She hadn’t seen her wife and daughter killed, like Rob Haney had. She hadn’t been attacked by a Mongolian Death Worm while on patrol in Iraq, like Earl had. She hadn’t stumbled in on her mother in a pool of blood, like I had. I couldn’t understand the motivatio
n. Why would she be so insistent on learning to be a knight? Was she just that good of a person?
“Girl trouble?” Dallas stood at the bottom of the stairs.
“Something like that,” I said. “Are they all crazy?”
“Some of ‘em.” He nodded wisely. “It’s why we’re so fascinated by them.” He pointed at the gate in the middle of the basement. “So that’s it, huh?”
“It” was a pyramid trap, a magic spell that had been used in ancient Egypt. Used to protect, you guessed it, the pyramids. Once the power was activated, it was supposed to be impossible to break in or out. Theoretically. It hadn’t held up against the power of the Gauntlet of Greckhite.
“I don’t know if it still works, since Bill hit it with the super-whammy.”
Dallas closed his eyes and a waved a hand over the metal U-bar that held the gate closed. “Seems to be working. The ancients who designed these things made them hard to kill for good. And Abelard knew what he was doing.”
I pushed the gate closed and concentrated hard on activating it. A sudden rush of power made the hairs on my arms stand up and a deep growl rumbled from beneath the earth. The strength of the trap would cut off Amy, effectively erasing her from the magical board. The demon wouldn’t be able to scent her, as long as she was behind the gate.
“So,” Dallas said, “I was thinking. You ever hear of a hellhound with three heads?”
“No.”
“I have. Supposedly the first hellhound, the father of the rest of them, looked like that.” The wizard looked seriously for a moment. “I think our three-headed friend might be Cerberus.”
I groaned. Of course the hellhound was the mythological guardian of the afterlife. That was just my luck.
“I’m not an expert on the Greek myths,” I said. “I mean, I ran into some sirens once, but that was…different. Any idea how to kill this thing?”
“Not off the top of my head,” Dallas said. “Not unless you have Hercules on speed dial.”
“No such luck.”
“I’ll get into it.” He turned and headed back to the stairs. “I’ll be at the Hat. By the way Madison asked me to tell you she got addresses for that guy Paul Ellis. The werewolf that the kid wants to go see? She said you’d want to know.”
