"Mom. How could you become… become one of them?" Julie asked plaintively.
"I didn't have much choice, dear. But once you get used to it, it is wonderful. I can do things that you can't even imagine. I can feel things that would stop your heart if you experienced them. I have eternal youth and beauty. Come with me… We can take your daddy. The change will be good for him. It will fix his mind. We can be a family again."
"Never," Julie said with determination. Her brown eyes narrowed as she concentrated on her front sight.
"Suit yourself, dear. But it beats being a rotting piece of meat… like your boyfriend here is going to be if you don't back the hell off of me." She picked me up off of the ground. I cringed as my vertebrae popped. All pretenses of motherly love vanished. "I didn't want to kill you, honey, but if you push me, then I don't have a choice. I'm taking your daddy back no matter what."
"You got three guns on you. Kind of stupid to be making demands," Holly said. The vampire hissed at her. "I hate vampires, sister, give me a reason."
"I'm a Master now. I'm a queen in my world. You can't even begin to understand what I can do. This is your last chance."
"You're too young to be a Master," Julie stated calmly. She stayed framed in the doorway. The other two slowly began to spread out even further. Holly looked angry. Trip looked scared but determined. Fingers moved onto triggers. Somebody was going to shoot at any second. I could feel it. I tried to make myself as small a target as possible. That is very difficult if you happen to look like me.
"Too young? Am I now? Poor kid. Just like your dad. Nose always in a book, thinking that you understand what's really going on. I was a Hunter once myself. I know what you know. And let me tell you, you're wrong. It isn't about time, honey, it's about the blood. The power is in the blood that makes you, and in the blood that you take. I was made by the strongest of them all, and I've taken so much blood and so many lives that you can't even begin to understand. I have swam in rivers of it. I've torn the life out of ten thousand beating hearts, and you will be next. Now give me your FATHER!" She shouted so loudly that dust shook from the ceiling and all of the humans in the room flinched.
Gretchen appeared in the hallway, short and cloaked in her burkha, armed only with what looked like a stick. She pointed at me and said a single word in a rumble almost as deep as her husbands'. "Pocket."
I reached down, cringing against the pressure on my neck, trying hard to focus and maintain consciousness, my hand touched my pants pocket. There was something inside. I reached in. My fingers felt the lumpy texture of poorly whittled wood. The Old Man's handmade toy.
It could not be there, but it was.
Without thinking, I pulled the impossible little carving out, and stuck it firmly against the hard fingers pressing into my neck. The toy disintegrated in a flash. The undead thing that used to be Susan Shackleford screamed when it touched her, an unbearable howl of burning agony. I was dropped to the ground as her hand burst into blue flames. I hit the floor and rolled away as the other three Hunters reacted and started pulling triggers.
It was the first time that I had seen more than a darkened silhouette of my midnight visitor. She really did look like Julie, but possibly even more hauntingly beautiful, ethereal, even stunning. Pale skin, dark hair, eyes that you could drown in, but then the resemblance stopped. For vampires were unnatural creatures, and right now this one was distracted by a burning hand, long fangs revealed in a frozen scream. A split-second snapshot of confusion and pain, and then the bullets hit.
Impact after impact tore into the creature, spraying black fluids across the room. Holes appeared in the wall behind as bullets passed through tissues and shattered bones. I scrambled for my shotgun as the uninhibited blasts assaulted and damaged my hearing. I grabbed Abomination, swung it around, and still sitting on the floor, fired a nine-round magazine of buckshot into the creature. One hundred and eight silver pellets struck her body in less than a second and a half, and at that limited range, most of them were still impacting as a solid penetrating mass.
The room was filled with drifting smoke from burning flesh and gunpowder. Brass tinkled, steel and plastic thumped on the floor as the four of us simultaneously dropped our spent magazines. I fumbled toward my armor and ammo pouches. Susan Shackleford was pressed solidly into the riddled corner, torn asunder, leaking black fluids, and broken by the carnage that we had unleashed. The flame on her hand gradually died down as she studied it through her shattered visage, seemingly in fascination. The creature stood upright. Her flesh had been pulverized and stripped from her bones.
She laughed at us. A long hard laugh, as if we had provided some serious entertainment. "Hunters are even more pathetic than I remember. I'm a Master now. Don't you understand what that means?" Almost instantly her flesh was whole and white. I blinked, trying to understand how exactly that worked according to the laws of physics. She smiled widely, fangs gleaming. "You can't kill me."
"But we can try," Julie answered as she dropped the slide on a fresh magazine. She snapped the pistol up and shot her mother right between the eyes. The creature's smiling face rocked back briefly. I locked in a fresh magazine of buckshot, but before I could fire, the vampire moved in a blur of speed, crossing the room in a split second, almost too fast to track. Holly was knocked easily aside. Julie's hands were jerked over her head as the vampire grabbed her.
"I offered you immortality, honey. That was not a choice. I'm going to give it to you whether you want it or not," the vampire said in her sweet Southern belle voice. I snapped my shotgun up, but stopped, fearful of striking Julie. Trip's UMP was reloaded, and he had a clean angle. He lifted the gun to fire, but it was torn out of his surprised hands. The vampire had moved so quickly that I had not even seen it strike. "You can either come back as a dimwitted slave, or you can partake of my blood and taste of my power."
Julie struggled to release herself. "Never!" she shouted.
A small black flash charged in from the hallway. Gretchen screamed some sort of battle cry. She shook a narrow stick above her head, complete with feathers, leather braids, and what looked like a shrunken head. The vampire hissed, let go of Julie, and retreated back into the room. Gretchen pursued, still shaking her totem and shouting in her strange gravel-voiced language. The vampire fell back, cringing and recoiling, until it struck the wall.
"Holy symbol!" Holly shouted as she aimed her Vepr and pulled the trigger. The roar of the. 308 was tremendous in the enclosed space. If I lived through this I was probably going to be deaf. The bullet tore into the vampire's side. The rest of us followed suit, firing over and around Gretchen, who continued to wave the stick and hold the vampire back. I emptied my second magazine in a heartbeat, and grabbed another one. My hands were a blur as I reloaded. Our lives depended on putting some hurt into the evil thing, and I moved faster than I ever had before. Abomination barked again and again as I put solid silver slugs into the monster.
Susan Shackleford disappeared. More holes were torn into the already damaged wall before we realized and stopped shooting. One moment she had been there, the next she was gone. The shredded nightgown fell to the floor and lay in a puddle of black ooze. A thick gray mist spiraled slowly out of the open window.
"Did she just turn into fog?" Trip asked.
"I didn't know they could really do that," Holly said.
"We didn't think they could," Julie answered. "Hey, that was my nightie."
"What?" I shouted. I was the only poor fool who had not been wearing their electronic earplugs.
"Reload. She's going to go for my dad."
That I understood. I did not have time to put on my whole suit of armor, so I threw the chest webbing on and buckled the pistol belt over that. At least I was going to have lots of ammo and a big honking knife. Gretchen pulled a leather pouch from under her burkha, dipped her gloved finger in and pulled out a blob of purple goo. She stuck it into my ears. It was cold and disgusting. After seeing what she had done with the road rash, howev
er, I wasn't going to protest.
"I called Earl. Help is on the way." Trip kicked his broken UMP. "We're gonna need bigger guns."
"My room's on the way. Let's go." Julie led the way into the hall, gun outstretched. "Where's Grant?" she shouted back over her shoulder.
"Haven't seen him," Holly answered.
"His turn to be on guard. She probably killed him already. Bitch. Damn it!" Julie raged. "Come on." I had thought that I had seen her angry before, but I had been wrong. "Trip, grab some hardware out of my room. Hurry."
"What should I get?"
"Use your imagination! Now go!" She sprinted down the hall. I was right behind her. I was barefoot. The hardwood was cold under my soles. I pushed past Julie as we approached the door to her father's room. There was no time for subtlety. I lowered one shoulder and with a roar I smashed into the heavy portal. It flew open as the frame broke under the impact.
Some thing was waiting for us, standing on the bed over the still form of Ray Shackleford.
Julie's mother had changed into something horrible, something out of a bad nightmare. Her false cloak of humanity had been shed and now we could look upon the true face of a Master vampire. Her body had twisted and elongated, gray skin stretched tight over twitching muscles as she swiveled her long neck toward us, her eyes were solid red, and her mouth opened to reveal incisors as long as fingers and sharper than knives. Her beautiful features had contorted back, ears lengthened and swept up, I could see how the vampire legends had come to include bats.
She had Ray by the wrist, she tugged and the handcuff chain snapped. She snarled at us as we entered. "You don't learn, do you?" Her voice had changed, becoming deeper and more animalistic. I raised my shotgun and fired. The slug struck her in the chest and exploded out the other side. I fired again as she hopped off of the bed, dragging Ray with her. The vampire grabbed the heavy wrought-iron frame and effortlessly hurled it toward us, several hundred pounds of furniture turned into a missile. The bed struck and I was hurled backwards into the hall. I crashed into Julie, and we both sprawled to the floor.
I opened my eyes. Julie was lying inches away, profile crushed painfully against the floor. "We have to shoot my dad," she cried as she tried to rise. "Don't let her take him."
"Got it," Holly stated as she stepped over us. The bed was lying sideways, blocking the doorway. She raised her Vepr over the obstacle and fired wildly into the room, emptying the twenty-round magazine in an instant. I surged to my feet and pushed the bed out of the way, Abomination held in one hand, ready to shoot as soon as I had a target.
There was nothing but a hole in the floor. Boards had been pulverized into sawdust, and the creature had dropped through, taking Ray with her.
"Aw hell," I said. If Ray fell into the hands of the Cursed One, the world was pretty much screwed. I could see no movement down the dark hole.
"Don't let her take him. Do whatever you have to do," Julie ordered. She stepped to the edge of the ragged hole, knelt down, and without hesitation began to climb. Tactically it was a stupid move to crawl blindly after a superpowerful undead, but we did not have any choice other than pursuit. She looked up at me before she dropped into the opening. I could not tell if her features were betraying fear or sadness. She disappeared into the dark hole.
"Clear!" she shouted.
I followed. My torso barely fit through the jagged opening, I leveraged myself down as best as possible, dangled from my fingertips, and then bent my knees and dropped the last four feet. I landed with a thud. Julie flipped the lights on. We were in the guest bedroom that had served as Gretchen's hospital. We were alone.
"Split up. Find them," she shouted up through the hole. "You three take the stairs."
"But if we split up, we're easy targets."
"Doesn't matter, we just need to stay alive long enough to kill Dad." She sounded desperate. "I'll head for the kitchen, you take the family room. Hurry."
"All right." I wanted to tell her to be careful. I wanted to tell her to stay alive. I wanted to tell her to be reasonable, and let me stay with her. But there was just no time. I fled the room, turning the lights on as I went. The mansion was huge, and the impossibly fast creature could be anywhere, or she could have already have fled.
No. She was going to stay and finish her work tonight. She had said that she was going to take Julie, and give her the gift of twisted immortality. Somehow I knew that Susan was still here in her ancestral home. She was here. I could feel it, and she had the one person who could help the Cursed One. I had to kill Ray before he could talk.
The doors to the family room crashed open when I kicked them with my bare foot. I swept in fast, shotgun at the ready. I activated the flashlight. I had no idea where the light switch was in the large room. Dozens of Shackleford faces stared down at me from their portraits. I stabbed the beam quickly into each corner, across furniture and construction in progress, and remembering my lessons from the Antoine-Henri, I shined the light on the ceiling as well. Nothing.
I ran for the next set of doors. The ballroom. I did not really know what I was going to do if I stumbled across the enemy. She had moved so quickly that I could scarcely believe my own eyes. Hopefully I would have time to blow Ray's brains out before Susan tore my head off. I really wished that I had Gretchen and her faith right about then. I knew that I did not have time to gain religion in the next few seconds, but it sure would have been nice.
The doors opened. I stepped quickly into the ancient ballroom. I heard a noise, something wet and slurping. I shined the Surefire light across the walls. The old-fashioned mirrors reflected the brilliant beam, over and over, refracting seemingly without end from all of the reflective surfaces. Even the chandelier was briefly lit. My reflection stared back at me from twenty mirrors, but there was another reflection as well. Ray Shackleford was in the center of the room, legs sprawled on the floor, head tilted back and mouth lifelessly open, torso slowly rocking, unsupported at an impossible angle as if he were held up with wires. I turned to face the center of the dance floor.
He was not unsupported at all. Vampires just didn't cast reflections. His wife held him, cradled in her arms. She was in human form again, squatting, with her naked back toward me. She was feeding from Ray's neck. She stopped drinking when the beam struck her. Susan lifted her dripping face and kissed her husband tenderly on the forehead, leaving a crimson lip imprint, before letting him drop limply to the ground. She looked at me and smiled. Her eyes reflected the light like a cat. She licked the blood from her lips.
"We have some unfinished business, you and I." She wiped her forearm across her face, and smeared blood down her bare chest. She strode wantonly toward me. I was terrified. I snapped Abomination to my shoulder, aimed at Ray's brain cage, and squeezed the trigger. It might have been murder, but the fate of the world was at stake.
Nothing happened.
I could feel the texture of the metal beneath the joint of my finger, but it wouldn't respond. I concentrated, but I could not force myself to pull the trigger. My hand would not respond to my brain. I could feel her presence, boring into me, her iron will testing itself against mine. She walked right into the gun, putting the muzzle directly between her breasts and over her heart. I could not fire. My body was frozen. I could not even move.
"You are a strong one," she told me, "but your human will is no match for mine." She dragged one fingernail under my eye, opening the skin and spilling blood down my cheek. A black presence pushed against my conscious mind, probing it violently, relentlessly. "Tell me, how did you hurt me? How did you burn me? Nothing can inflict pain upon a Master, but that did."
I tried to speak through rigidly clenched jaws. I fought a battle inside my skull, a fiercer fight than anything I had ever experienced before, a struggle for the very control of my body. The black weight pressed down hard, and unfortunately for me, this was an unfamiliar battleground.
"Tell me your secret, Hunter. Tell me and I will give you a gift. I can see it in your mind, the
very thing you desire most." She smiled seductively. "Let go of your secrets, join me, and I will give you my daughter. She can be yours forever."
The blackness encroached into my vision, I could feel the tendrils of her power crawling deep into my mind, and I was powerless to stop it. I did not know how to defeat something with no physical body. Pain began to emanate from my skull, rippling down my paralyzed spine, and searing every nerve in agony. I fought on, I did not know how, but I knew that I fought.
"I just have to say, Hunter, you have the strongest will of any mortal I have ever encountered. You'll make a good servant for Lord Machado." I watched in horror as her razor fangs extended. I knew what was going to come next. She would rip me open and drain my blood. Either she would let me just die to rise again as a near mindless undead, or she would open her own veins and force me to partake of her blood, and I would become a horrible beast in her image. I despaired, but I fought on.
Boy. Let me help.
I heard the comforting voice of the Old Man. Suddenly I had hope. Something else joined my internal struggle, another presence took up the fight, the blackness paused, and was then overwhelmed and pushed aside. I gasped in relief as my muscles unlocked.
Susan stopped, her teeth hovering centimeters from my throat. "How-"
Abomination cut her off as a solid ounce of silver exploded through her black heart. She stumbled in surprise. I felt the Old Man's presence leave my body to continue his assault against her mind.
"You want my secrets?" BOOM. BOOM. I shot her twice through the face. "You really want to know?" BOOM. BOOM. I shot her in the throat and chin. "There is no secret…" BOOM. A slug pierced through her brain, rocking her back. "I just hate monsters!" CLICK. I released the silver bayonet. It locked into place with a snap. "So go to hell…" I slammed the broad blade through her torso and released the shotgun as I reached for my knife. "And die…" THWACK. The ganga ram's blade embedded halfway through her throat, lodging against her hardened spine. Black fluids and fresh red blood geysered forth. "You evil bitch!" I wrenched the big blade violently free.
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