We probably wouldn’t have the advantage for long. The vampires we’d sealed into the tunnels would have other exits and alternate routes. Like any predator, they wouldn’t have used the tunnels without them. The most likely scenario was that we would find them at Morning Star when we got there, waiting for us. After all, when the way was blocked, you backtracked. It just made sense.
Still, we were already doing better than we had been before. This time, we’d be attacking instead of defending on two fronts. This time, we wouldn’t have civilians likely to get caught in the crossfire. We had more of a chance of being able to win under those circumstances, no matter how many of them there were. I liked the feel of going on offense. It meant my power could roam free, at least until I was tapped out or dead from a fatal nosebleed, though I doubted that would be what killed me. My cause of death, if we failed, would be cold, toothy, and ancient.
We gained entry through the back door, just as we had the last time. They hadn’t figured out they shouldn’t be leaving the key lying around before, but tonight would be a teachable moment for the fangers in more ways than one. Once inside, we ran for the basement door.
My feet splashed through a few puddles as we ran, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. At least the police, when responding to the alarm, had been able to turn off the water. I would have felt a little bad about the civilians stuck working in the building otherwise.
We found one vampire guarding the door to the basement. He was a big, hairy man, and I wanted to laugh. People usually thought of vampires as these sleek, beautiful killers, and here was this guy who looked like an unkempt version of Sasquatch snarling at us from the door. Maybe it was hot-headed of me, but I didn’t hesitate. I just blasted him with a fireball hard and hot enough to shake the whole building.
The Sasquatch collapsed to the ground, and Tess snorted at me. “Nice and subtle. I’m sure that won’t stick out in anyone’s mind.”
I chuckled, but I didn’t waste time responding. We had a fight ahead of us. As Kamila blasted open the door to the cellar, Tess and I got ready to take on a horde of vampires.
The horde never came.
Instead, only two more fangs leaped out at us from the dark. I shot one, and Tess stabbed the other. It seemed anticlimactic, but I knew this wasn’t all there would be to the fight. We would have plenty more vampires to fight very soon.
We made a makeshift torch from a smashed table leg and the cushioning on one of the office chairs. They were terribly flammable when it came down to it, and the torch could double as a weapon if a vampire surprised Tess.
The stairs were steep and long, and they had no handrail to guide visitors down. We were all young and in great shape, but an elderly, infirm, or drunk person would be toast. I expected the air in a place like this to be damp, especially in the tropics, but I found it to be just about as dry as humanly possible. I even found sand in a few corners. It struck me as odd, grating against my consciousness even as my shoe scuffed against it.
When we got to the bottom, flames shot out from jets on either side of the stairs. Tess was far enough in front of us not to be affected, but Kamila and I both felt the full force of the trap. A vampire jumped out at Tess from behind a support beam, intending to tear her throat out, but she stabbed it before Kamila and I could get through the fire to do anything.
“What was that supposed to be, a bath?” Kamila sniffed. “I’m sure I could use one, but that’s not the way to get things done.”
“They weren’t expecting people with a fire immunity.” I kept my voice down, but I didn’t need to. The fiends attacking us had the kind of super-human hearing you only heard about in comic books. The thought made me look up, and I saw yet another vampire clinging to the ceiling.
“You dickheads just don’t quit, do you?” I snarled and turned his blood to steam. I’d been working with my powers all night, and I should have been exhausted. A good part of me was exhausted. The thought of these vampires holding someone captive down here, or even just standing up to me and trying to keep me from what I needed was simply infuriating. I felt the anger renew me from within, like a battery powered by rage.
My fury rose as I turned the vampire into a greasy scorch mark on the ceiling before he could drop down and try to hurt any of us. None of us stuck around to admire my work; we merely picked up the pace. I doubted that any of us wanted to get caught out down here.
We soon realized the tunnel wasn’t straight. A fork opened up in the path, and we had to choose a direction on instinct or luck. I had a hard time navigating down in the dark, but I knew the club was closer to the waterfront than Morning Star was. If I followed my instincts toward the water, I should be able to pick out the right path.
Or so I hoped.
I directed Tess toward the right fork. She followed it without question, and we all hurried into it. We got a few dozen yards down that section of the tunnel, when Tess tripped.
Tess was as sure-footed as a cat. I didn’t need to feel the sudden spark to know she’d fallen afoul of a tripwire. I dove on top of her, pulling Kamila to the floor with me. The bomb blast just missed us. I felt the flames shoot over my back, but they weren’t anything for me to worry about. The actual blast might have been something more, but even then, it would have had to take off my head or damage my heart beyond repair. I stood up and dusted myself off, only to come face to face with a beautiful woman.
Well, she was beautiful except for the fangs and claws.
She brought her razor-sharp nails down across my shoulder and chest. I hissed, but I wasn’t going to do more than that. I’d had worse, after all. I knocked her back with a blast of fire and pulled out my gun.
I would have shot her without remorse, but Kamila took her out while spitting a curse. Tess and I kept moving, and Kamila caught up to us right away, her lips still moving in anger as she regarded the ashes with a glare.
Two more vampires stood guard in front of yet another locked room. It was the only locked room we’d seen so far, which indicated we might be in the right place. The two vampires looked similar enough to have been siblings in life, maybe even twins. I didn’t care now. They could be as alike as they wanted. The three of us were still going to take them down without a thought, regardless of their shared lives.
The first of them jumped out at me with a snarl, looking to slash up and across my abdomen. “Repulsive Ferin!” he spat, using my nature as a vile curse. “You would even show your face here, miscreant?”
I dodged his blow, even as Kamila turned his brother into a living candle. “Who talks like that?” I punched him in the chest, again and again. It didn’t do anything, and it wasn’t even really meant to. I was just doing it to make myself feel better, using the satisfaction of violent impacts to relieve the dangerous rage I now held in my mind. I boiled any and all liquid inside the man, setting him to writhing inside his own skin.
He screamed just before turning to ash, leaving the world at the same time as his brother. Now I could take out my frustrations on the locked door to the room. Whatever was inside that room smelled terrible, but not as bad as a corpse. It didn’t have that damp smell that went with decomposition either. It was more like… “Pork jerky?” I scratched my head. At the end of the day, it didn’t matter. The smell, and its cause, were things the vampires wanted hidden. We needed to expose it.
I punched at that door until it shattered, my anger channeled into every hammer blow. I was angry, I was frustrated, and I had something to take it out against. The door was perfect.
When the door fell inward, Kamila darted ahead. She had the most personal connection to this whole mess, after all. Tess and I were hot on her heels. None of us got very far. What we saw brought us to a horrified stop, our eyes drawn upward like moths to a flame.
A woman had been chained and suspended from the ceiling in a spread-eagle position. A leather sack had been placed over her head. The rest of her was completely exposed and covered in burns. Heat lamps surrounded her, and
fans stood at the four corners of her body to circulate the dry, hot air around her. Dehumidifiers waited just beyond the fans, sucking any humidity remaining out of the air. She was being roasted, the destruction of her body so casually done, I fought the urge to vomit or scream, or perhaps both.
Her torment was happening without anyone in the room to see. From the welts and bruises on her flesh, I could see her captors hadn’t been content with passive torture. I had no idea how long she’d been down there, but she should have been dead long before. She wasn’t, and that meant one thing. It was Zarya.
I rushed forward and pulled the heat lamps away. I didn’t care if they caught this whole hellhole on fire. Kamila understood what I was doing, and she kicked over the dehumidifiers. Tess went for the fans, and finally, Kamila gently pulled the leather mask from her friend’s head.
Zarya looked like a mummy after a fire.
I turned my head away, unable to stomach the sight. The poor woman must have been suffering. The problem with immortality was that you couldn’t die. If someone dried you out like a stick of jerky and they did it in a way that kept you from fighting back, then you were just stuck forever, in an endless loop of harm and healing, your own ability bringing you back from the edge of destruction no matter how much you wanted to die. It was perfect, and evil, and unlike anything I could fathom.
I searched my mind for a way to help her. We could have thrown her into the ocean since it was only a short distance away, but I didn’t feel comfortable with that. Not only would the salt make her burns feel worse than they already did, but the short distance would feel like agony. I could summon water. I just didn’t know if I could be gentle about it.
It was better to try and fail than to stand there like a lump and do nothing for her.
I concentrated and thought about a cooling, gentle rain, the kind we used to get on summer days in Maine. I remembered how a brown, dried-up lawn would spring to life as the ground absorbed it and the way fresh flowers smelled after the rain stopped. Sifting my memory, I found the perfect balance between storm and cloud, using the moisture to create fog, then droplets, and then at last, a soft rain.
I heard the rain falling there on the cobblestone floor. Zarya gasped and fell forward, right into Kamila’s arms. When I opened my eyes, Kamila was holding her friend, neither of them speaking, neither needing to say a word. The rain had initially fallen onto the floor, but as I watched, all of the moisture disappeared, drawn into Zarya like water fading into sand.
Zarya’s burns healed. Her skin, wasted like leather, turned back into the soft, pale skin of a normal young woman. Her brittle hair was now blonde and full of life again, curling about in careless waves as she pulled her lips upward in a pained smile. Her turquoise eyes were round and fearful when she turned to look at me, but she bowed her head. Flakes of skin fell, and she twitched with the effort, but she did it.
“Thank you,” Zarya said simply.
Tess put an arm around my waist. “I’m glad we made it, Zarya. But we haven’t escaped yet. We still have to get out of here, and there are beasts around us.”
One corner of Zarya’s mouth twitched, like she wanted to laugh. “Ah. Well, we should do something about that, I suppose.”
23
A small part of me was hoping we’d get away with it, but nothing worked that way when you dealt with vampires. I knew I was just being naive, but after seeing Zarya in the state she’d been in when we found her, I thought maybe, just this once, we could slip away without getting noticed. Maybe, just this once, we could end it without more pain. More blood.
It was not to be.
Five vampires stormed into the room the minute Zarya was able to stand. I was running out of steam, Tess had been fighting nonstop, Zarya was hurt, and not only was Kamila almost as burned out as I was, but she had to support Zarya.
I passed Zarya my gun. She was in the worst shape of all of us, so she needed it the most. Chivalry might be dead, but I had power to spare, and Zarya was freshly back from the brink of a gruesome death.
The vampires arranged themselves in a pyramid, the obvious leader in front. I didn’t bother with posturing. I knocked the leader back with a fireball that made the hair on his chest scorch, but he stood up quickly.
“I guess you’re just used to dealing with kindling, pup.” He curled his lips into a savage parody of a smile, waving his scarred hand. “If I was willing to turn the island whore into witch jerky, think of what I’ll do to you.”
Zarya took a deep breath, leaning heavily on Kamila. Then she howled with fury. A geyser erupted underneath the vampire, impaling him through his chest. The vampire screamed, his voice rising several octaves as the gushing stream lifted him up off the floor and slammed him into the ceiling.
The rest of us stood there dumbfounded. I had raw talent and plenty of it. I wasn’t shy about admitting it, but Zarya made me look like a toddler. She took that same blade of water impaling the vampire and used it to chop off his head. Ash rained down on the rest of us while we watched in a daze.
Then she took the gun with the silver bullets and shot another vampire in the head.
The gunshot startled everyone back into action. Four more vampires rushed into this small room to take the place of the two who’d died, and the fight was on.
I used my fire to turn one into steam. He must have been older than the ones we fought before because it didn’t seem to have much effect on him. He lunged at me with a knife. He stabbed right through my forearm, and I cried out in pain and shock. It was a sharp blade, which meant exactly dick because it still hurt like hell. The wound didn’t stop me, though. I was getting a little too used to working through the pain. I used it to push myself harder and forced his internal temperature to rise. He exploded in messy, ashen bits, the last look on his face one of grim surprise.
Tess whirled around the room with her little silver-tipped spikes in hand. She fought with the ferocity of ten, although she could only attack two at a time. Claws raked across her bare back, but she didn’t seem to notice. She used the momentum to turn herself around and stab the offender in the head with one spike, then swept her free hand up in a hissing arc that killed the vampire behind him. Two spikes, two kills. Every time.
Kamila blasted an approaching vampire with a fireball that took his head off, knocking it into the vampire behind him. It looked almost like she was bowling, which made me laugh at the grotesque absurdity of it all. While Kamila killed, Zarya took careful aim and shot her next target, the vampire hit by the head of his companion.
Both of the remaining vampires came after me. One grabbed me around the neck with an icy, iron-like hand. For a second, I flashed back to that men’s room in Maine. I would probably still be flashing back to that men’s room in Maine four centuries from now, if I lasted that long. When the other vampire bit into my still-bleeding forearm, I panicked and lashed out.
I called up water, massive jets of water not unlike what Zarya had summoned forth. Of course, I didn’t have her finesse in my best moments, and now, I was in a panic. These were just jets of raw, powerful water, never intended to do more than blast. They were cannons of fluid, brutal and wild.
Then I heated them up. They became steam, cooking the vampires’ skin. It wouldn’t kill them, but it kept them occupied with the pain instead of worrying about how I tasted. It bought me time to burn them alive, and that was all I cared about at this point. Their screams echoed down the corridor, until they stopped abruptly.
I pulled my power back into myself, shuddering. The wound on my forearm was already closed.
“You still with us there, Jason?” Tess patted my shoulder. “Because we should go while we can.”
“Yeah, we should.” I swallowed and ran with the others.
We took a shortcut that seemed random to me, but according to Zarya, it led out. I would take her word for it. She’d been here longer than we had. We raced up what felt like a hundred stairs, this time with Zarya on my back, finally emerging on the d
ark streets of Belize City. We didn’t pause. We didn’t think about stopping to make it look good.
After all, if the police decided to stop me because I was carrying a naked lady on my back, there wasn’t a lot you could do to redeem yourself.
We ran back to the hotel as fast as our feet could carry us. I carried Zarya up to our room, along with Kamila, while Tess soothed ruffled feathers down in the lobby. I didn’t know what her cover story was with the night clerk, but I didn’t care.
I stood to the side and let Kamila help Zarya into the tub, where she groaned with pain and relief. The best thing I could do right then was stand aside and stay out of the way, even though I wanted to offer comfort and help. I was a stranger. I wouldn’t be all that keen to have a stranger poking around when I’d just been rescued from a situation like that.
I shuddered at the final sight of her skin, still marred from her ordeal.
I decided to pack up our things so that we could beat a hasty retreat when the time came. Daisy woke up and yawned at me, not very thrilled about all of this activity so close to sunrise. Then she gave up willing me back to bed and turned around to go see what Kamila was doing in the bathroom.
Tess reappeared. When she saw what I was doing, she nodded. “Good thinking. We can’t stay here.”
Kamila and Zarya emerged from the bathroom, with Daisy close behind. Zarya was wrapped in a big, fluffy bathrobe. She still looked dehydrated, not to mention wary, but she was cleaner than she’d been. Most of her wounds were healed too.
Kamila looked at us like we had two heads. “Why the hell can’t we stay here? Jason, you’re bleeding. Tess, you’re not in better straits. Zarya’s in worse shape than I’ve ever seen a living Ferin. We need to rest. We need to take care of ourselves.”
I took Kamila’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “We do need to rest. We do need to take care of ourselves. The thing is, this hotel isn’t secure. The vampires can just walk right up through the lobby, kick down the door, and tear us to shreds.”
Forever Young - Book 2 Page 15
