by Max Turner
I hoisted myself over the lip. Ophelia was surrounded. As I drew my sword, a deafening boom hit my eardrum like a slap. Uncle Jake was right beside me, the canister gun on his shoulder. A thin ribbon of smoke drifted from the barrel. My eyes followed the metal cylinder as it arced over the penthouse. A dark cloud of swirling smoke had gathered there. Something solid was taking shape in the centre of it. The canister exploded like a giant Roman candle and a shower of bright red sparks tore through the air, filling my nose with the reek of burnt metal.
“Out of the way,” Uncle Jake shouted.
I could barely hear him. My ears were ringing. He pushed me to the side, then fired several pistol shots into the cloud. It started to spin around, like a miniature cyclone.
“There,” Uncle Jake said, pointing. He fired several more rounds, but the bullets passed harmlessly through. He set the pistol down and started loading the canister gun with another tin-sized cartridge. “You can hit him only when he materializes. I’ll light him up; you finish him off.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about.
On the other side of the roof, Ophelia was fighting for her life. Pestilence rose up from her shadow again. Blood dripped from his injured shoulder and hand. He tried to grab her sword arm but she jumped clear. I started towards her, but Uncle Jake pulled me back. “She can take care of herself. We need to deal with this smoker. He’s far more dangerous.”
He dropped to his knee and took aim down the barrel of the canister gun. I followed his line of sight to the funnel of smoke overhead. Right in the middle was the ghost-like outline of a man’s torso. The twister started spinning faster and shot forward.
Uncle Jake fired. The canister entered the twister and exploded. Tiny fragments of burning metal hissed through the smoke. For an instant, the man inside was cast in silhouette. Something was on his head. A helmet or a turban, I couldn’t tell. In one of his arms was a curved sword. It made me think of the Arabian Nights, stories my father had read to me of dervishes, djinns and demons.
Uncle Jake raised his pistol and emptied the clip. The vampire went fuzzy and dropped his sword. The bullets passed right through him. Then his silhouette hardened and his scimitar returned to his hand as though pulled by an invisible thread. The man and cyclone headed straight for Uncle Jake. I leapt between the two, sword raised. Smoke and dust swirled past, filling my eyes with hot grit. At the last second, I resolved the man’s shadow and met him, blade to blade. My sword sparked and I got knocked to the ground. The man flew by, the cyclone roaring like an angry wind.
Uncle Jake put a hand under my shoulder and helped me to my feet. “Good timing,” he said. “Just like your father. Now get ready, he’s going to make another pass.”
“Who is it?” I asked, blinking furiously.
“I don’t know. But I’ve never seen a smoker like this. Usually when you burn them they solidify long enough to take them down.”
After roiling overhead for a moment, the cloud began to spin again. As it dropped, a shadowy outline of the man’s head and torso appeared at the leading edge of the funnel. He reached out and his curved scimitar spun straight into his hand. I raised my own sword just in time to avoid being cut in half. The impact shattered my blade and sent me crashing into the pool fence.
“This is my last one,” Uncle Jake said. He was loading the canister gun. “When it explodes, finish him. You have only a split second—when he’s solid.”
I stared down at the useless handle in my hands. There was barely enough metal attached to cut a sandwich. The building shuddered. I could hear more glass raining onto the street below. Cracks appeared in the mortar of the penthouse walls.
Suki was shouting from across the street. I glanced over and saw the cable was moving frantically. Charlie was climbing in our direction, hand over hand. Ophelia shouted for him to go back but he didn’t listen. I was amazed that she’d even noticed with all of the activity around her. Two vampires lay still at her feet, but three others were closing in, warily. I could see no sign of Pestilence. One of the vampires tried to circle around behind her and strayed too close to the edge of the building. Bullets cut through the air. Luna was shooting from the far roof. The vampire stiffened as several rounds found their mark. Ophelia wasted no time cutting him down.
“Focus,” Uncle Jake shouted. “Here, take this.”
There was a knife in his hand. I needed something with more heft, so I kicked a Plexiglas panel from the fence and tore one of the steel posts from the concrete pad around the pool. The vampire of smoke dropped. This time there was no cyclone, he just surrounded us like a patch of dense, sulphurous smog. I couldn’t breathe. It was like being on the stairwell again. I clamped my mouth shut as the shadow of his torso drifted past. I swung, but the post went right through him and he disappeared.
“Zack, he’s behind you,” Charlie shouted. He’d cleared the edge of the roof, gun in hand.
One of the vampires near Ophelia broke away to engage him. I didn’t see what happened because the smoke around me thickened. Something crashed down on my wrist, and the fence post I was holding clattered across the patio and splashed into the pool. Then the vampire’s blade hit the armour over my stomach and folded me in half. I sucked in a mouthful of foul air and started coughing. His next stroke would have taken my head off, but I was saved by the familiar boom of the canister gun. The air around me caught fire. Smoke burned. I raised an arm to shield my eyes. Sparks flew everywhere, burning my face and neck.
The cloud thinned and the man took shape again. His body was charred. Steam hissed from the bloodied cracks in his skin. He faced Uncle Jake, who was standing on the edge of the building, pistol in hand. He fired until he was out of bullets. All of them were perfectly aimed, but each passed though the man’s smoke-like body and slammed into the bulletproof windows of the penthouse.
The vampire moved forward. He was limping. Uncle Jake pulled a second pistol from his belt. While he fired off another magazine to no effect, I closed in on the man from behind. He spun, his blade raised. I blocked it with the armoured plate of my forearm, then brought my fist crashing down across his wrist. He looked so much like a shadow that it surprised me to hit something solid. He dropped the sword. I caught it before it hit the ground, then swung. The blade passed right through him, leaving a small ripple of turbulence across his chest.
I was now close enough to see the man’s features. He had heavy cheekbones and large oval eyes. There was a suggestion of a moustache and close-cropped goatee. He scowled and drifted backwards. At the same time, a torrent of sulphurous ash billowed in front of me. I started coughing again and lost sight of him.
Then two dark hands took firm hold of me from behind. I was hoisted from the ground and hurled into Charlie’s father. I thought we were both going to spill over the edge of the roof, but Uncle Jake was a large man, and strong. He stood with his feet braced wide and held his ground. I heard a deep grunt and felt his hands under my arms, keeping me on my feet.
“Now!” he shouted.
His eyes were wide and staring right behind me. In his dilated pupils I saw a blurry man-shaped shadow closing in. I turned. The man had retrieved the handle of my broken sword and was stabbing it down towards my unprotected neck. It seemed to be happening in slow motion. The outline of his person was as solid as I had seen it, and his whole body was exposed. I was still holding his scimitar and used it to knock his weapon aside. As he flew by I raised one arm in front of my face to shield my eyes. He took hold of the scimitar and tore it away. Uncle Jake was still behind me. The cloud hammered into him, and he was lifted off his feet and carried past the edge of the building.
I heard Charlie shout in alarm. The crack of his gun followed. Bullets whizzed through the torrent of smoke, but none found their mark. The cloud dissipated. For an instant, it left Charlie’s father suspended in mid-air. Then he cried out and fell.
CHAPTER 15
PARTING WAYS
I DOVE FOR the lip of the building and reache
d out my hand, but Charlie’s father was too far away. The next thing I remembered was getting hauled to my feet.
“Get moving,” Ophelia shouted. She pushed me back towards the cable that was still strung from the pool fence to the far roof. “There’s nothing we can do now. The building is going to collapse.”
Charlie was beside me. His face was blank. He must have been in shock. We both were. Ophelia grabbed him by the arm and pulled him around.
“I have to see,” he said.
Ophelia tightened her grip. I’d seen her like this before: when her husband, Vlad, threatened to kill my friends and me. She was like a piece of granite. Unyielding. Charlie stopped struggling and she led him to the edge of the building. I then noticed all the bodies on the rooftop. There were a dozen dead vampires around the pool. Ophelia’s handiwork.
“… you listening to me?” she shouted.
I hadn’t been listening. I’d been searching for Pestilence. His corpse was not among the dead. “Where is he?”
Ophelia gave me a confused look, then handed her rapier to Charlie and sent him zipping across the cable.
“I’ll go after you,” I said.
She was about to argue, but two white, pustule-covered hands rose from her shadow and closed over the tops of her boots. A surprised “What?” burst from her mouth, then she began to sink into the roof. I grabbed both of her arms. We pulled, but she sank farther into her shadow, first to her knees, then to her thighs. It was just like the floor of my closet when Pestilence had nearly killed me in my dream. But this was real life. I was losing her.
I pulled harder, but it made no difference. She kept slipping down. Then the building shifted. Her eyes widened, and she twisted her arms free.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
She answered by pushing me backwards. I was right on the edge of the roof so my foot came down on empty air. I reached out and grabbed the cable. It was still attached to the pool fence, but with all the damage the panels had sustained it couldn’t hold me. The line pulled free.
The far end was still firmly secured, so I swung like a wrecking ball across the street and smashed into a balcony railing three floors below the top. The metal buckled, but I held on. Luna leaned over the side of the roof. She said something to me, but it didn’t register. My mind was stuck on Ophelia and the sight of her being dragged away into the darkness. I started to get dizzy. It was all I could do to hang on.
Luna started hauling me up. I did my best to climb as she pulled. “What just happened to Ophelia?” she asked.
I couldn’t answer.
Charlie appeared at the edge of the building. I thought he would help, but he didn’t. “What happened to my father?” he shouted. “What happened?”
I flopped over the side. He grabbed my armour so the chest plates were sandwiched between his hands, then jerked me to my feet and started shaking me. “You had a chance to kill that smoker, didn’t you? I was watching. You could have taken his head off, just like that idiot bounty hunter last night, but you didn’t do it. Why?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Was he right? In my mind’s eye, I could see the smoker streaking towards me as he made his final charge. He’d been solid. My broken sword was in his hand. I had his longer, heavier scimitar. My first thought had been to protect myself, but if I’d gone for the kill instead of knocking his weapon aside, it might have ended things. And Charlie’s father would still be alive. I felt my face go numb.
Charlie pushed me away in disgust. I’d never seen him so angry.
“Where’s Ophelia?” Vincent asked. He was standing beside Suki, staring back at the building.
As if in answer, Iron Spike Enterprises let out a terrible groan. The ground shook. A noise followed that was like an earthquake, then the entire structure dropped straight through the street as though it were being sucked into a giant hole. As I watched, shocked and helpless, a thick cloud of dust rose high into the air.
Charlie waved his hand in front of his face, then turned and glared at me, his eyes red-rimmed and furious. “Tell me he got away. Tell me he’s not splattered on the sidewalk or buried in that rubble with the rest of those freaks.”
Those freaks had taken Ophelia. She would have been buried, too.
“I shot that smoking vampire with at least a dozen armourpiercing rounds,” Charlie said. “He didn’t even flinch. That pasty one fell thirty storeys and came back like nothing happened. How are we supposed to beat vampires like that? How? HOW?”
“We aren’t supposed to beat them,” I said. It was a battle keeping my voice steady. “We were supposed to die.”
He looked back at the dust cloud that had once been our home. We’d just lost everything. Our blood. Our weapons and equipment. Our sanctuary. All of our things …
“We haven’t lost everything,” Luna said.
“No,” I agreed. “We still have the silver case.”
“I meant we still have each other.”
“Oh, right. Of course.”
I looked over at Vincent. His face was still a sickly grey. He was petrified.
Suki took him by the hand. “Come on. That fat-faced vampire with the sores can come right out of the shadows. We’re not safe here.”
Vincent resisted. “I don’t want to leave without Ophelia.”
I didn’t either. Luna reached out a hand to steady me. The rooftop was spinning. My legs felt weak. I thought my knees were going to buckle.
“Where can we go?” Vincent asked.
Charlie didn’t answer.
Luna fixed me with a silent stare. Where? she asked.
There was no answer for that. Without Ophelia, I had no idea what to do.
CHAPTER 16
A SHORT REST
WE HAD TO get out of sight, so once we’d kicked our way in through the rooftop entrance of the apartment building, we scrambled down to the underground parking lot.
“What now?” Suki asked.
Charlie scanned the rows of parked cars and walked over to a rusted minivan. “This is too old to have an alarm.” The door handle wouldn’t engage, so he smashed his fist through the driver’s side window and unlocked it. Once inside, he tore the cover off the steering column and turned the ignition. “Get in.”
No one argued. Suki rode shotgun and the rest of us climbed in the back.
He pulled out of the lot slowly. We had to wait while an automatic door opened. It seemed to take forever. I kept thinking another wave of vampires was going to wash over us. Instead, we drove out through a dust bowl. A few spectators milled about in confusion, texting madly and taking video with their cellphones. We put them behind us as quickly as we could. Fleets of emergency vehicles were soon racing everywhere. The thought that they might find the corpses of Ophelia and Uncle Jake in the wreck of Iron Spike Enterprises made my stomach spin.
Vincent kept asking where we were going. No one had any answers. I made the mistake of asking Charlie if he had any ideas. He came to life just long enough to lose his temper.
“Do you think I care? Just … look … whatever. Don’t talk to me right now.”
So we didn’t talk. We just drove down René Lévesque Boulevard, the air so tense it took all of my concentration just to breathe. Then Charlie swore.
“What?” Suki asked.
“The tank’s almost empty. Anybody got cash?”
The collective answer was no.
“Well, that rules out leaving town, unless you want to get out and push?”
This started a debate about what to do. The girls were convinced we should try to find a hotel room so we could decompress and plan our next move. The lights of the Sheraton were visible down the street. “Do you have any other ideas?” Luna asked.
I didn’t. “If we don’t have any money, how are we going to pay for it?”
“Zack, your uncle left you so loaded you could buy this place,” she said. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
Charlie slid to a halt in front. “I need
to ditch this van.”
Luna and Suki climbed out. Vincent didn’t move. He looked at Charlie. “I want to stay with you.”
I sensed Charlie wanted to be alone. Suki noticed too. “You should come with us, Vin. You’ve got that poor orphan look working for you right now. We might need it if we’re going to convince anyone to let us stay here.”
I undid my seat belt. Luna stood outside my door so I couldn’t open it. I rolled down the window.
“Let us handle this,” she said. “Two guys with bloodstained body armour are just going to make everyone nervous.” She fixed me with a stare. Do what you can for Charlie. He’s a mess right now.
I swallowed hard.
Charlie drove around the block, then slipped the van into park. “What happened?” he asked me.
I knew what he wanted to hear. That I could have saved his father by killing that vampire. He might have been right. If I’d practised kill strokes during our training sessions and programmed myself to act differently, when my instincts took over I might not have been so defensive.
“I had no idea that would happen.”
“My father is dead and that’s all you have to say?”
“I don’t know what else—”
“How about, I’m sorry, Charlie. I could have killed that guy, but I let him live and he greased your dad. How about that? How about, I should have listened to you after the Arabian Elvis showed up, Charlie, so I didn’t blow it when people were depending on me. My father was counting on you and you let him down. Thirty storeys down. After all I did saving your bacon on the stairs, the least you could have done was put up a decent fight.”
Disgusted, he climbed out of the van and slammed the door with such force the windshield cracked.
A part of me wanted to chase after him and argue, but I realized that he was right. People had been depending on me, and I’d failed them.
When he was about a block away, I slipped out and followed him to the hotel. My feet were so heavy it seemed a miracle I could walk. Charlie had just lost his father, and it might have been my fault. And Ophelia was gone. I had no idea how we were supposed to survive without her. My eyes started to water. I didn’t fight it, I just watched my friend’s back as he pulled farther away.
