by Skye Knizley
“Hardly,” Levac replied. “You smell like an outhouse. You aren’t clever enough to arrange all this, who is pulling your strings, Church?”
“Who is pulling yours?” Church snarled.
“Enough!” Raven roared. “I want to know what you brought with you, Church.”
Church reared his head back and laughed. “We all have wants and desires, Storm. Right now I want to taste you.”
Church leapt, extending snakelike appendages made of worms and flies from his hands. Raven squeezed the Automag’s trigger and watched as the bullets passed through his head. The insects and vermin that comprised his body simply parted like smoke and allowed them through before reforming his hideous grin. The pincers from his arms slammed into Raven and pierced her arms, pinning her to the floor and sending her pistol spinning away into the darkness.
“You can’t kill me that way, Ravenel,” Church laughed. “Not even with your father’s toy. If the Master didn’t want you, I’d be dining on your flesh instead of gazing into those beautiful eyes.”
“Get off her!” Levac yelled.
“Or what, sidekick?” Church asked. “Run away and save your precious eagle before I change my mind and eat your face while your Mistress watches.”
Levac smiled and Raven could see him aiming down the barrel of his Sig. She nodded just once and closed her eyes.
“She isn’t my Mistress,” Levac said. “She’s my friend.”
Levac’s bullets felt like flame where they pierced her skin and she squirmed, trying to bite back a scream. Church’s grip on her loosened and she opened her eyes to see his chest regrouping where Levac had shot him. She raised her left arm and gripped the appendage pinning her to the floor.
“Eat this!”
She pulled the pincer from her arm and rammed it into Church’s face. He howled and let go, falling to the floor. Pieces of him, cockroaches and dung beetles, squirmed away to disappear beneath counters and into air ducts.
Levac reloaded his Sig. “Some of you is solid, Church. I bet you didn’t expect both of us to be carrying specials, did you?”
“I admit, I didn’t think you would have the guts to shoot,” Church said. “Well done.”
Raven stood, the wounds in her arms and chest already closing. “You’d be surprised what my friends can do, Church.”
“Indeed, I am,” Church said.
Again he swirled into thousands of insects, only to coalesce on the opposite side of the room.
“I have much to report to the Master, but do not fear. I will see you again, soon. In the meantime, enjoy my gifts.”
With a jaunty wave he collapsed into his components and vanished into an air duct.
Raven stooped to retrieve her pistol and turned to Levac.
“Thanks.”
“Nothing to thank me for, you’re the one who got shot,” Levac replied. “Are you alright?”
“It hurts, but I’m holding it together. Let’s finish this floor and head upstairs. I want that bastard.”
Raven followed Levac through the corridors, wishing her body wasn’t screaming at her to drink blood. Levac’s specials and Church’s tentacles had done more damage than she was willing to let on and she could feel her strength beginning to ebb as they passed by room after empty room. It felt as if something was eating away at her in addition to the healing wounds. When they neared the central staircase again she leaned against the wall to rest.
“Gimme a second, Rupe,” she said.
Levac turned from the hospital room he was peering into and looked at her. His expression changed from a look of caution to one of concern.
“You don’t look so good, Ray.”
“I don’t feel so good,” Raven said.
She groaned and lowered her hand to her belly, where a sharp pain had taken shape. It felt as if something was moving beneath her skin and she jerked her hand away in surprise.
“What the hell?”
She raised her top and Levac shined his tactical light on her bare midriff. In the bright light they could see something about the size of a quarter moving beneath her skin.
“What is that?”
Raven drew one of her knives. “Something that isn’t supposed to be there.”
She placed the blade against her skin and was beginning to cut when another wave of pain shot through her. She dropped the knife point first into the ground and clutched at her face where another of the objects was moving. She could hear a sound like it was eating the flesh inside her jaw. She pushed on the object and could feel it tearing through the skin of her mouth. A moment later it burst through and scuttled across her tongue. Raven bit down on it as hard as she could and then spit the shrapnel onto the floor. There, mixed with bits of flesh and bone, was a small scarab beetle of the kind usually only seen in museums, leftover remnants of a long gone Egyptian age.
“Jesus!” Levac yelled. “Ray, they’re all over your back.”
Raven groaned and climbed to her feet. “Church, he must have laid them when he attacked me.”
“We have to stop them, they’re eating you alive!” Levac cried.
“Get Sloan. Hurry.”
Levac squeezed Raven’s unwounded shoulder and ran off. Raven waited until she could no longer hear his footfalls before she turned around and headed back the way they’d come. On the way she pulled a bag of plasma from an IV stand and drained it before she entered one of the rooms they’d passed. It contained a cryotherapy chamber cooled by liquid nitrogen. The chamber was capable of cooling well below freezing to a temperature that would kill the beetles. If it didn’t freeze her solid or drive them deeper into her tissues first.
Biting back tears of pain she keyed in a temperature of minus thirty. Ignoring the warnings, she tossed her jacket onto a chair and stepped into the chamber.
Time passed. How much she didn’t know. She’d blocked out everything but her will to endure the pain. Somewhere she could hear Levac calling her name, but it was hard to focus. Her eyes felt like they were made of lead and moving was difficult. Every part of her felt asleep. With all the strength she could muster she pushed against the chamber door until it opened and she fell to the ground outside.
“She’s here,” a voice said.
Legs and shoes came into focus. Levac’s worn loafers and a pair of no-nonsense nurse’s clogs.
“Damn, Ray, what did you do?” Levac said.
“It looks like she tried to freeze them,” Sloan said.
“Did it work?”
Fingers that felt like hot pokers rolled her onto her side and she felt her top being lifted.
“They aren’t moving. I should be able to remove them if we hurry.”
“What about Raven?” Levac asked.
“I don’t know, Rupe, she’s very cold. Help me get her onto a table then go get as much blood as you can find. She’s going to need it,” Sloan said.
Raven felt herself lifted. She tried to call out, but her mouth was full of blood and beetle parts. She opened her mouth and pushed as much of the gunk out with her tongue as she could. It was wiped away with a cloth.
“That’s it, Raven, get them out,” Sloan said.
She was placed face-down on an operating table and she could hear people moving around, but everything was dulled by the cold and the pain of the creatures beneath her skin.
Raven heard something else and then Levac’s voice. “We don’t have time for anesthesia. SWAT is going to kick down the doors any time now.”
“Are you sure?” Sloan asked.
“Yeah, she can kick my ass later. Do what you have to,” Levac said.
Raven tried to say she agreed with Levac, but all that came out was a faint gurgling sound.
She heard the rustle of cloth and the sound of metal on metal.
“Raven, my lady, this is going to hurt. Rupert, get the blood.”
Hurt was an understatement. It felt as if someone was ramming a flaming sword into her back over and over again. Each circle of pain was followed by t
he faint sound of something hard, like a marble, being dropped onto a metal tray. It seemed like hours before Sloan stopped, when she did, Raven breathed a sigh of relief that the pain had subsided to a dull roar.
“I have them all, Raven,” Sloan said. “We’re going to roll you over onto your side so you may feed.”
She felt warm, gentle hands and the world moved. She could see Sloan and Levac standing over her and she tried to smile, managing nothing but a rictus of pain.
“Here, boss.”
Levac had opened a blood packet and upended it into a cup. He placed a straw in it and held it to her lips. For one of the few times in her life she drank the contents gratefully. It was only after the fourth cup that the sick, cloying taste came back to her and she pushed the cup away.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You have not had enough, lady Raven,” Sloan said. “Your wounds are only starting to heal.”
“Trust me, unless you want the floor decorated with more red, I’ve had enough,” Raven replied.
She sat up and pulled down her top, wincing where it scraped over the raw, weeping cuts in her back.
“How long was I out?”
“Almost an hour,” Levac said. “We couldn’t find you. You should have told me you were moving and where you were going.”
Raven looked at him. “If I’d have told you, you would have tried to stop me.”
Levac opened his mouth, but it was Sloan who answered. “What she did may have saved her life, Rupert. The damage is extensive, but would have been much worse had the creatures not been slowed by the cold.”
He closed his mouth, then opened it again. “Maybe. But it was stupid to do it without telling me. What if we hadn’t found you?”
Raven slid off the table onto legs that threatened to buckle beneath her. “I would be dead, same as where I’d be if those things had kept eating away at me.”
She looked at the tray of half-dead beetles. More than fifty of them lay on their backs covered in her blood. Church had sent them into her body in seconds. He was far more dangerous than she’d thought.
“I left my knives somewhere,” she said.
Levac handed them over, along with her pistol. “You should feed, Ray. Please.”
Raven slipped her knives back into her boots and checked to make sure the cold hadn’t effected the Automag. “Yuck. I already feel like I’m going to be sick. Let’s just go find Church and put an end to this.”
“What should I do, my lady?” Sloan asked.
“Get back to your people,” Raven replied. “But be careful.”
“Will you be alright by yourself?” Levac asked.
Sloan smiled and raised one hand. With blinding speed the skin and bones flowed to formed a four-fingered claw with wickedly curved talons. “I think I can manage, love.”
Levac kissed her and stood with Raven to watch her leave. When she was out of earshot he said, “She can kick my ass, can’t she?”
“On any day of the week, partner. Try not to piss her off.”
WEST SCHOOL STREET, CHICAGO
FALL 1999
MASON STORM SAT ON A park bench, a photo of his wife and daughter in his hand. It had been taken on her fifteenth birthday and she looked happier than usual. He remembered that he and Tina had argued earlier that morning, Tina wanted Raven to become something called a Fürstin, a sort of vampire bodyguard. He wanted her to be a kid for as long as possible. It was already clear Raven was special. He’d known she was a dhampyr since before she was born, but she was more than that. He still didn’t understand how, but Raven could run faster, jump and hit harder than any other child her age, dhampyr or not. The city was full of dhampyrs that lived normal lives, but he feared Raven would never be one of them. And there had been Tina, trying to ensure that she couldn’t.
In the end, he’d agreed to let Raven be trained. When it got out just how special she was, sooner or later the bad guys would come to test her. She needed to be ready.
He smiled at the picture and hoped she would one day understand. He hadn’t planned for things to get so crazy, but you play the hand you’re dealt.
“Detective Storm.”
“Agent Blight,” Storm replied without looking.
“I prefer King, if you don’t mind,” King replied.
“Suit yourself. It’s better than Van Helsing.”
“Van Helsing doesn’t exist,” King said. “I sometimes wish he did, with all that we face.”
He sat next to Storm and rested his hands on his cane. “Good looking family. Does she know who she is, yet?”
“Raven? No. Not really,” Storm said. “Tina wants to tell her, but I don’t think she’s ready yet. I want one of my kids to get to be normal for a while.”
“None of us in this life is normal, Wulf,” King said.
Storm put the picture in his pocket. “As normal as can be, then. I pray to god she decides to become something safe, like an accountant.”
“I doubt that will happen. She has your blood.”
“I can hope. What did you want to see me about?”
“We found Church,” King said. “He’s living in the guise of a man named Quentin Swales. I believe you have been following him for some time. Attending his parties and whatnot.”
“I had a feeling about Swales, I just haven’t been able to dig up enough on him. The man is a ghost.”
King nodded. “As is Church, the thing that is pulling his strings.”
Storm picked up his cup of tea from the Doughnut Vault and sipped the cold Earl Grey. “What do you need me for? If you found him, do your thing. You’re the FBI.”
King rubbed his chin and looked sheepish. “I don’t have anyone who can handle him. Silver and Sable are too young for this kind of thing and I’m too old. I’ll hand over the evidence we have to your captain, you make the arrest. Or bag what’s left of him.”
“I don’t think I know Sable,” Storm said.
King looked away. “That’s right, I forgot. She’s a dhampyr like your daughter. Too young for something like this.”
“There seem to be a lot of them around,” Storm said. “Do Strohm’s people know?”
“I hope not,” King said. “For their sake.”
Storm finished his tea. “Me too. Give me the address, I’ll go bring Church in.”
King fished a card out of his coat and held it out. “Be careful, Wulf. I’m certain he’s not alone.”
Storm took the card and started walking back to his Shelby. He stopped halfway and turned back. “Why do I have the feeling there is something you’re not telling me?”
“I’m with the FBI,” King said. “Of course I’m not telling you everything.”
“Dammit.”
He turned away and slid behind the wheel of his car before looking at the card. It was an address a few miles north of Old Town, an apartment building a few blocks from Strohm’s tower.
With a bad feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, Storm put the Shelby in gear and accelerated away.
MERCY HOSPITAL, FOURTH FLOOR
PRESENT DAY
THE FOURTH FLOOR OF THE hospital was dark; even the emergency lights had been shattered and now lay in pieces on the landing. Raven stepped over them and peered through the window. The room beyond was strangely devoid of bodies, but the floor was covered in large overlapping pools of blood that trailed off down the hallway leaving long slimy tracks that disappeared into the dark maze of rooms.
She opened the door and sniffed cautiously. Again she could smell blood, which was no surprise, but also the same scent she’d detected before; sickness, death and decay. Something much older.
“What do you think?” Levac asked.
“I think there are about fifty newdead whatevers waiting for us down that hallway,” Raven replied.
“We must be cautious, then,” Levac said.
Raven stifled a laugh and stepped into the lobby. The layout was similar to the third floor with a central lobby opening into the no
rthern and western wings. The nurse’s station had been wrecked, leaving a desk good for nothing but starting a fire and scattered bloodstained papers. The bloody track left behind by the newdead and their victims led away to the western wing while the northern looked clean.
Raven stepped over the largest of the blood puddles and squatted near the desk. She could smell blood coming from the north and here and there she could see faint outlines of bare, bloody feet.
She holstered her pistol and drew both her knives.
“This way, quiet as you can.”
Levac jerked his head toward the western corridor. “All the blood goes that way.”
“Exactly.”
She moved down the hall with cat footed grace, pausing at each room to glance inside. Her heart broke at the bloodstained sheets and scattered personal items, but she kept going. The only way to make things right was to avenge them and put an end to their suffering.
Raven paused at the next room. The smell had changed from a hint of blood carried on the breeze from air vents to a thick miasma that threatened to make her gag. She looked at the door she was standing next to. It was open about an inch and she had been about to push it open. She kicked it instead, crushing the newdead that had been lurking on the other side. She was through the gap in an instant, her blades flashing in the gloom. Two of the vampires dissolved into ash before they even realized she was in the room. She pinned the last one to the wall and held her blade to its throat. Most newdead were little more than animals. It took a while before their personalities came back. There were a myriad of theories as to why that was, but right then Raven didn’t care to think about them. She was too busy hoping the Master wasn’t as powerful as she thought he was.
“Where is Church?”
The newdead struggled in her grip, hissing and snarling like a wild thing.
Raven tried again. “Church. Where is Church?”
“Do you really think she is going to tell us anything?” Levac asked.
“Probably not, but it’s worth a try.”
She bounced the newdead’s head off the wall. “The Master. Where is he? Come on, I know you have more than two brain cells in there, tell me something!”
The vampire snapped at her once more, but Raven could see the lights coming on behind its eyes.
