by Devin Hanson
“If you kill us, even if you escape to international waters, MSC Bari will never be welcome in the States again.” Lara stood straight and looked Sasha in the eye. “I don’t think your employers will be happy with that.”
Sasha took the pistols from the Satanist and weighed them in his hands. “You’re right. I won’t kill a cop. But you,” he pointed at me, “are not a cop.”
“She is working with the police department,” Lara said firmly.
“She’s a traitor! Betrayer of her own kind!” the vocal Satanist yelled.
Sasha looked at the Satanist in disgust, then a thoughtful frown spread over his face. “I do not wish for our future business to be compromised in America. We cannot be held responsible for the actions of the locals, though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lara demanded angrily.
“It means that once we have finished loading, I will hand you over to these fine believers. I understand they have ways of making people see things their way.”
Sasha was talking about forced possession. “I would die first,” I snarled.
“I don’t doubt,” Sasha waved a hand, dismissing my outburst. “But would your friends have the same strength of character? Everyone has a breaking point, my dear Nephilim. I do wish I could find out what yours is, but my business calls me away.” He jerked his head toward us and the tattooed men closed in on us with coils of nylon rope.
It didn’t take long for us to be tied into neat packages and propped against the fender of an SUV off to one side. The tattooed men knew their way around rope, and they weren’t stingy with it. The Satanist standing guard over us was a formality at best; Houdini couldn’t have broken free.
“This is going fantastically,” Sam said. I could hear the strain in his voice despite the forced levity in his words.
“Not a drug exchange, though,” Lara said with the same artificial cheer, “so we got that much right.”
Pointing out that I had warned them would be churlish, but I did it anyway. “I told you so,” I grumbled. “One of these days, you’ll learn to listen to me.”
“Can’t you just bust out of these ropes?” Sam muttered. “You’re strong enough.”
Lara rolled her eyes. “She benches less than I do, Sam.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I grouched. “I need lust for that. I’ve been running dry ever since… you know.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Well, given the circumstances, couldn’t we, ah, work something out?”
I could feel the halfhearted stirrings of lust coming from Sam. Danger was an aphrodisiac, one of the best, but only after the danger had passed. I was no more interested in sex right then than he was. “If only it was that easy,” I shook my head. “Besides, I thought we agreed.”
“Yeah, well. I’ll admit to being thick-skulled at times.”
“Can we focus, please?” Lara asked waspishly.
I leaned back against the radiator grill and felt the warmth of the engine against the back of my head. Sam and Lara were talking softly amongst themselves, no doubt trying to put together some sort of plan. They were wasting their time. Unless they could figure a way out of the ropes, the greatest plan in the world would come to nothing.
My plan was more straightforward. It didn’t involve overwhelming the Satanist watching us or slithering under the SUV or any other nonsense that was sure to fail. In fact, I didn’t have to do anything at all for my plan to come to fruition. I just had to wait.
And hope Tovarrah showed up before the Satanists were done unloading their victims.
Chapter Seventeen
I’d be the first to admit “cross your fingers and wait” was a shitty plan. Being wrapped up in what seemed like a quarter mile of rope and lacking the strength to break free cut my options down significantly. That was the point of tying someone up, wasn’t it?
The tattooed men brought a bright white shipping container over with a motorized dolly and opened it. The interior of the container was furnished and equipped to act like a miniature hospital. I counted six bunk beds against one wall. No wonder they were pissed. There had to be over twenty possessed in the SUVs.
“We have room for six. Pick the most promising and get them loaded,” Sasha ordered. “You’ll have to figure out what you want to do with the rest.”
“We have support equipment,” one of the Satanists protested weakly. “Couldn’t we just get another container?”
“No, you idiot, it doesn’t—Look. We don’t own the Bari. We are tolerated on board because of our extremely generous contributions to the crew’s welfare. We have shipping permits for one container. One. It is impossible to add another container to the manifest at this late stage. Maybe if you had told us a week ago you were bringing so many, we could have arranged it then.”
“But what are we supposed to do with the rest?”
“Why are you asking me? I don’t care, slit their throats, set them free, do whatever the hell you want.”
“Lord Martin said—”
“I could give a shit what your boss says. Six people. Pick them out and get them loaded, or fuck off.”
The Satanist scowled, but ducked his head in reluctant acceptance. “Fine. Brandon, Tyler, pick six of the best.”
There was a bustle of action as the Satanists hurried to the SUVs and started going through which victim was in which vehicle, calling out names to each other and arguing over merit. It didn’t take them long before they came to a consensus and they started hauling handcuffed or unconscious people across the pool of light to the waiting container.
“Woah, woah. Hold up,” Sasha stepped up, waving his hands at them to stop. “What the fuck are you doing? I said six of your best.” He stopped next to the gurney where the man with stigmata was lying, still trying his best to stretch his arms out. “Get rid of this shit. Why are you wasting our time?”
“But… I don’t… he’s the most promising of all our candidates,” the vocal Satanist protested. “Look at him! Stigmata doesn’t manifest in one out of a hundred these days.”
“Yeah, maybe. I wouldn’t know. But this is a male. He’s useless to us.”
“You only want female?” the Satanist asked, confused.
“Do I have to write it out in crayon? Females only. Give us your six best females. You do have six, don’t you?”
“Yes, I mean, half of the candidates are female, roughly. We don’t discriminate.”
“Then it should be easy. Pick the six prettiest and get them loaded.” Sasha snapped his fingers in the Satanist’s face. “Move! What are you waiting for?”
“Prettiest?” The Satanist was trying to keep up, but he had no more idea of what Sasha was talking about than I did. “I thought you wanted the ones most likely to reach the final stages of possession?”
Sasha rubbed at his eyebrows in exasperation. “Look, shitwit. My masters aren’t going to breed some ugly fat cow. Your six prettiest women, in the container! Hurry! We don’t have all night.”
The hairs on my arms rose as understanding came to me. The men from the boat weren’t Satanists. Not in the usual sense, at least. They served masters that lived on Earth, in the physical world. The only ones who had any functional use for final-stage possession victims.
Vampires.
I leaned forward and picked out what the deep shadows and tattoos had hidden from me earlier. Scar tissue on the neck and the inside of the arms formed a tangle of swooping curves. It was just another detail that Anne Rice had gotten wrong about the vampires. Pronounced canine fangs belonged to the djinn. The descendants of Cain had teeth that more closely resembled a deep-sea anglerfish than any terrestrial mammal. The wounds vampires caused when they fed were crescents of ragged punctures, not two prominent stabs in the neck.
No wonder Nicolai hadn’t gone down easily. Supposedly, after a few dozen bites, the buildup of analgesic saliva destroyed nerve channels, making their thralls oblivious to all but the most severe pain.
I turned to whisper my
discovery to Sam when a metallic boom echoed out over the container lot. It sounded like someone had rammed a car into a container. I snapped my head around and stared toward the lot.
My current position and the light glaring into my eyes from a few feet away made it impossible to make out anything but inky darkness. The Satanists craned their heads and muttered amongst themselves while the thralls drew weapons and several of them hurried off into the darkness.
Sasha gestured angrily at the Satanists. “Move! You have six females? Get them loaded, damn it!”
There was another boom, closer this time, and a third immediately after it.
“What is making those noises?” Sam hissed at me.
“How the hell should I know?” I grunted back. Nobody was paying attention to us, and I took the opportunity to work my hands from behind me down around my butt. I squirmed around on the ground as I struggled to get my bound feet through the circle of my arms.
More booms sounded, coming nearer to us. Whatever was coming, it sounded like it was crushing shipping containers on the way. What would make noises like that? A servitor might; they were large and heavy enough, but those creatures preferred stealth.
I pushed myself back up into a sitting position with my hands in my lap. I was already feeling better. Just having my hands in front of me made all the difference in the world. I was still bound hand and foot, but I could crawl now.
There was a metallic crash just outside the light and something dark flew overhead. I bit back a cry as the thing landed on the roof of the medical container and put a dent in the corrugated sheet steel. My pupils were still screwed tight by the headlights shining in my face and I couldn’t make out any detail at all. A vaguely humanoid shape spun about and one of the Satanists gave a throaty grunt.
I spared a glance for the Satanist and watched him sag to his knees, his hands exploring the length of rebar driven through his chest. He made a quizzical noise and fell on his face.
There was a rasping chime and the figure on top of the medical container dropped to the ground. The tight fear gripping my chest released and I gasped in relief. “Savit!”
The marid was covered in overlapping plates of ballistic armor, a sort of modern rendition of plate mail. A heavy sword as long as I was tall was in one hand, and his other arm was covered by a broad steel plate, dinged and starred with bullet impacts.
Savit came up swinging. The nearest thrall was still turning to face the marid when Savit’s sword caught him under one arm and tore clean through his chest and out through the far side of his neck. The severed shoulder and head spun off into the darkness in a spray of gore.
The night exploded in strobing muzzle flashes and Savit raised his shielded arm to cover his head. Bullets hammered into the shield, sparking and ricocheting with howling fury. I saw one of the thralls get slammed to the ground by something invisible, his submachine gun spinning away out of his grasp.
“Behind us!” Sasha screamed.
A thrall spun, spraying wildly into the darkness, and something slapped him in the chest hard enough to lift him off his feet and hurl him into the circle of light. An arrow protruded from his chest, the shaft five feet long and thick around as a mop handle.
Sudden light blazed from above and a spotlight from the MSC Bari swung out over us. A second armored figure was illuminated, crouching on top of a nearby stack of shipping containers, an enormous bow in his hands. Calmly, Amat drew another arrow to his cheek and let it fly. The spotlight winked out, leaving sunspots dancing in my vision.
In the moment of distraction, Savit had leapt into motion and closed the distance to the next closest thrall in a single bound. The marid’s downward-sweeping blow took off the thrall’s gun arm at the shoulder and a following punch from the shield arm flung the thrall through the air like a ragdoll.
My view of the fight was blocked by a robe. I looked up to find a Satanist towering over me. I recognized the vocal leader.
“Whatever else happens, traitor,” he growled at me, “you’ll die tonight.” A knife glinted in his hands and he lunged toward me.
I flung myself to the side and heard the knife scrape on the bumper of the SUV. The Satanist’s hot breath hit me, rank and sour. I rolled onto my back and kicked up with my bound feet. I hit the Satanist somewhere in the chest and he staggered backward, cursing.
He jumped at me again before I could recover, knife held high. Sam threw himself at the Satanist’s feet and knocked him off balance, turning the plunging attack into a lurching stumble. I found my balance and rolled to my knees. I swung my bound hands at the Satanist’s knife hand and connected solidly. The knife went flying off into the darkness.
My victory was short-lived. The Satanist abandoned the knife and threw his weight on top of me, driving me back onto the pavement. My head bounced on the ground and stars burst through my vision. Calloused fingers dug into my neck and squeezed.
“You’re done, traitor,” the Satanist snarled in my face.
The Satanist knew what he was doing. He wasn’t trying to cut off my air supply, instead he was putting pressure on my carotids, damming the blood flow to my head. I struggled, but he had his knee pinning my arms to the side and I couldn’t find the leverage to shift his weight. Darkness pulsed around the edges of my vision and the distant surf grew louder until it was roaring in my ears.
There was a flash of something ruddy and the weight of the Satanist disappeared along with the grip on my throat. I wheezed after breath and rolled onto my side. Tovarrah stood over me, the Satanist dangling from her grip on the back of his neck. She flung the man to the ground and put two rounds in his chest from a heavy revolver.
A marid I didn’t know ran up beside Tovarrah and casually shouldered an SUV over onto its side. He posted up behind the engine block with a belt-fed machine gun and started putting three-round bursts downrange.
Tovarrah knelt beside me. “Are you all right, Alexandra?”
“I am now,” I wheezed gratefully. “You’ve got amazing timing.”
“We got here as quickly as we could. You did not tell me there were thralls present.”
She produced a knife and cut through a loop of the rope around my wrists. With the ropes loosened, I wriggled out of them quickly and started working on the knots around my feet. “Yeah, well. I only just recognized them myself. I’ve never seen one in person before.”
Tovarrah finished cutting the ropes around Sam’s wrists and handed him the knife. “There will be more of them. We had best leave quickly.”
Savit leapt the overturned SUV and landed with a crash next to us. The black paint on his shield was streaked and marred with what looked like hundreds of bullet impacts. He was breathing hard and the sword in his other hand was red with blood.
“Commander, we have to leave. They’re regrouping with heavier firepower. This position is too exposed from the ship.”
“The possessed?” Tovarrah asked calmly.
“Lost. There is no time.”
“Very well. Do not leave any for the thralls to take home to their masters.”
Savit jerked his head in a nod and slapped the marid I didn’t know on the shoulder. “Clean burn, Tovic. You hear that, Amat? Get out, no heroics.”
Tovic thumbed the selector on his machine gun over and lifted the gun up to settle against his shoulder. A rolling crash of thunderous gunfire hammered against my ears, painfully loud and the muzzle flare from the machine gun lanced out five feet as he swept it back and forth over the cluster of SUVs.
I couldn’t take the noise any more. I grabbed Sam by the arm and beckoned at Lara. Words were useless with the hammering gunfire, but neither of the detectives had any problems with following my gestured suggestions. Tovarrah took the lead and we ran.
For a moment I wondered if Tovarrah expected us to go jumping across the container lot, springing from container to container like Savit and Amat had. Then an explosion roared behind us and in the light of the rising fireball I spotted a big pickup truck par
ked up the road ahead of us.
Tovarrah took the wheel and Savit climbed into the cab with her. Tovic jumped up into the truck bed, making the vehicle sway alarmingly, and pulled us up quickly after him. The truck roared to life and Tovarrah floored it.
My last sight of the clustered SUVs was of fire billowing skyward. The scattered bodies looked like bundles of clothing. Nothing in sight was moving. The gas tank of another SUV caught fire and exploded, sending a second ball of fire rocketing skyward. Then we turned a corner and only the ruddy light shining on the containers ahead of us told of the continuing fire behind.
None of the possessed people could have survived. Tovic had seen to that. Even if they had lived through the torrent of bullets, the following explosions and fire would have killed them. I hadn’t witnessed it, but I was pretty sure none of the Satanists had survived either.
Sam and Lara looked as stunned as I felt. Now that the ringing in my ears was beginning to subside, conversation was becoming possible again. I just didn’t have anything to say. We had gone to the port on a hunch. Neither of the detectives, or myself, for that matter, had expected things to go sideways, and we hadn’t had a chance to come to grips with what had happened.
We slowed for a moment, and Amat jumped down from a stack of containers and climbed into the back of the truck with us. His quiver was empty and he settled back against the tailgate with his enormous bow held across his knees. He gave me a white-toothed grin and a wave.
“How are you, Alexandra?”
“Fine.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “It is really good to see you guys.”
“Savit was pissed when we rolled up on that church and found it empty. If he had had his way, we would not have responded to your call for help.”
I grimaced. “I did warn Tovarrah they would bug out when they got wind of you coming.”
“You did.” Amat nodded. “We attempted operational security because of that, but clearly we were not as careful as we should have been. Savit saw it as a sign that you had warned the Satanists.”
