“It kind of reminds me of how things were when we dated,” she said as they moved to the front of the food storage area. “And then you started dating a rich girl.”
“Woof,” Sam said. Zoe’s tail lightly flicked against him.
There were two exits actually, one that went straight to the kitchen and another that went into the school grounds. Sam pressed his ear against the door that went to the kitchen; he didn’t need to activate his power to hear that there was some activity on the other side. This led Sam to believe that the two now tied up in the back of the food storage area had come through the other door.
“Let me guess,” said Zoe. “There are people on the other side of that door, leaving us no other option but to do this by going through the courtyard.”
“Exactly,” Sam said as he checked his wrist guards once again, as ready as he could be for what could possibly happen next. “Are you sure you aren’t a telepath?”
“No, just a half-breed.”
“You’re much more than that.”
“Really?” she asked, her eyes softening a bit as she took in his features.
“Really. Now let’s go save the day.”
“That sounded so corny.”
“But it’s sort of what we’re supposed to do, right?”
“You aren’t wrong,” Zoe said, her tail flicking against him again as she turned to the second exit.
Chapter Forty-Two: Grim Discovery
(Evil is as evil does.)
Sam Meeko nearly did a Helena-style backflip once Dinah appeared in the food storage area. Her form wavered, a look of incredible terror and sadness on her face.
“Take us to them,” Zoe said, coming forward.
Dinah nodded, and floated through the door that led to the courtyard.
“Be ready for anything,” Zoe told Sam as he crouched in front of the door, opening it ever so slightly, even though they both were certain the coast was clear on the other side. He let it creak open on its own, Zoe stepping out first and then giving him the go-ahead, Sam joining her in a matter of moments.
They were in a garden area of sorts, icicles hanging off of some of the plants. There was a wheelbarrow off to the right, as well as a collection of landscaping gear including rakes, garden forks and a few frozen spades.
“Where did she go?” Sam asked, looking around for Dinah.
“I don’t know, she was just here, and then…”
The blue ghost woman reappeared in front of a gate that led to the courtyard.
There was something different about her form; it didn’t seem as bright as it normally was, and Sam struggled to keep his eyes on her as they moved to the garden. At one point, he accidentally kicked over a pail, both Zoe and Sam crouching, their breaths staccato.
“You are worse than Ozella,” Zoe finally said once no one came running.
“I didn’t see it,” Sam hissed as they reached the end of the garden.
Dinah was now on the other side of the gate; it only took Zoe a moment to figure out how to unlatch it from the inside, and as the iron gate creaked open, Sam and Zoe mentally prepped themselves for what was to come.
Goosebumps, an increased heart rate, adrenaline firing, perspiration—all things Sam was experiencing as they followed Dinah to the other end of the school, doing their best to keep to any dark spot they could find.
Zoe kept to the shadows, and Sam stayed behind her, as close he could get, her tail occasionally tapping him to let him know that it was safe to move.
Once they reached a certain building, this one situated in a far corner, Sam noticed two bodies lying on the ground, which he instantly recognized as Dinah’s handiwork.
“Stay here,” Zoe said as she dropped to all fours and bolted forward. She checked the bodies and then looked up to Dinah, who kept pointing at the building.
Zoe glanced back at Sam and motioned him forward, her tiger ears standing to attention and relaxing again.
Keeping as low as he could, Sam crunched through the snow and joined Zoe.
“This is it, they are in there.”
“Okay,” Sam said, taking a deep breath in. “Let’s get them, and get the fuck out of here. We both know how to get back to the food storage building. If we somehow get mixed up, meet there, inside.”
“Right.”
“Dinah,” Sam said, looking to the woman who continued to point at the building before them. But before he could tell her to heal them, Dinah started to fade away.
Zoe shook her head. “That’s not a good sign…”
“Agreed. Let’s just get in there and figure this out.”
Maybe it was because it was night, or maybe the looming nature of the building’s shadow was due to a combination of the position of the moon, and the shared fear Sam and Zoe were currently experiencing, but the building seemed large, ominous, dark in a way that Sam had never sensed in a building before.
“Dinah would have told us if someone was on the other side, she would have indicated it somehow,” Zoe said, as she looked at the door.
“Then we just go in?”
“We just go in.”
“Okay, I’ll push it open and you charge in.”
“I was just about to suggest that,” Zoe said as Sam moved to the left side of the door, and reached out for the handle.
He opened it and used his elbow to push it back some, giving Zoe enough space to charge in.
Sam shouldered in after her, immediately activating his energy blade just in case.
There was a staircase in the corner that led to a floor above, but other than that, and a mysterious object in the center of the room, the space was empty.
“What is that thing?” Sam deactivated his weapon and approached the object.
It looked like a giant spindle of sorts, and it was only when he got closer to it that he saw that there were ropes tied to the object, and that these ropes dipped into the basement below.
Zoe’s ears twitched. “They’re down there, in the basement. All of them and… shit, Sam, this is bad.”
“Power-up, hearing,” Sam said as he placed his ear on the ground.
He could still hear his heart beating in his chest, and it took him a moment to focus his power forward, his eyes now closed, Sam starting to understand the spatial layout of basement below. It was a deep basement, an open space three stories tall.
His lips quivered when he heard some struggling, snarling creatures working together.
Shapes began to take form in his mind’s eye, and Sam came to the realization that the weird spindle thing in the center of the room was actually holding ropes, ropes tied to the legs of…
“Power-up, off,” he said as he pressed away from the floor.
“What did you find?” Zoe asked.
“They are hanging from the ceiling; the vampires are beneath them,” Sam said, barely able to get the words out. “We have to get down there.”
“But I don’t see a door to the basement… ” Zoe said as she moved around the room again. “There’s nothing.”
“What if there isn’t a door? What if they are using a portal or something to get down there?”
“That would make sense,” Zoe said, activating her energy blade.
“We cut through the floor?”
“Yes, we cut through the floor and then we drop some cherry bombs down. It may kill a few of them, but won’t get them all. And I only have a handful.”
“But only if we can see how far down the others are lowered; we don’t need any shrapnel hitting them.”
“Good call,” Zoe said as she moved to the corner of the room and activated her energy blade.
“And how are we going to get down?” Sam asked. “From what I can tell it is at least three stories deep.”
“There has to be more rope. Check around the space again, and see if you can find more.”
“Got it,” Sam said, moving to the staircase that led to the next floor up. With a deep breath in he took the stairs, ready for anything as he moved
to the second floor. The second floor just had a few boxes on it, and thankfully, he found a rope in one of the boxes.
Lifting it over his shoulder, Sam carried it back downstairs. The tiger girl had nearly finished cutting a square into the ground, a light on the side of her wrist guard blinking, letting her know that her weapon needed to recharge.
“Definitely not what these are designed for,” she said as the weapon fizzled out.
“I have two,” Sam said as he set the rope on the ground. “Take my blade, and I will keep the energy weapon.”
“Okay.” Zoe used her foot to finish the square she had cut in the wood. It gave way, but didn’t fall all the way to the floor below, not yet anyway, which meant she needed to give it a few more stomps before it finally splintered away.
Sam heard it hit the ground below, and the sound of creatures scurrying over to it.
“Power-up, sight,” Sam said as he got to his knees and looked into the hole. His wrist guard was now on the ground, so Zoe could put it on, and as she did so, Sam focused on what he was seeing below.
Even though his vision was a little wonky, and even though it was dark, he confirmed what he had heard.
Helena, Juniper and Ozella were suspended from the ropes, the vampire kids beneath them, struggling to reach the three.
Sam had also heard a dripping sound earlier, and cutting his head to the left, he saw that…
“Shit…”
“What is it?” Zoe asked as she looped one end of the rope on the spindle in the middle of the room, tying it off to give them counterweight.
“Power-up, off. They are bleeding them, or at least they were until Dinah healed them up. But some blood is definitely still dripping.”
“I just don’t get it,” Zoe said as she approached him with the rope. “But it doesn’t matter now. You and I are getting down there. And it looks like…” She peered over the edge of the hole again, confirming her suspicion. “I believe I’ll be able to use my cherry bombs without affecting the others. I’ll go first, and do as much damage as I can. You focus on shooting through their ropes, and getting them down. Maybe being upside down is what is keeping them semi-paralyzed.”
“Am I supposed to catch them then?” Sam asked. “I mean, if I shoot the ropes, am I supposed to catch them?”
Zoe bit her lip. “No, that sounds impossible. Shit. Okay. Let’s just take the vampires out first, and then figure out a way to get them down. I’ll hit the ground running, then you come with the energy blasts. Don’t shoot me.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
Sam locked eyes with Zoe. “Promise.”
***
“We are going about this all wrong,” Sam told Zoe, an idea coming to him just as the tiger girl was about to take the rope down.
“All wrong?”
“We should try to lure the vampires over to this corner, then I blast them with the stun setting on my wrist guard, or you drop bombs on them, or we do both at the same time.”
Zoe considered this for a moment. “Brilliant idea. Sorry, I should have thought of that. All this is happening so quickly…”
“We’re a team; we’re supposed to think together,” Sam reminded her.
“Spare me the pep talk,” Zoe said, a hesitant smile on her face. “We’ll get their attention by lowering the rope. They will come to investigate it. I’m sure.”
“And then I’ll start blasting them, and you drop a few of your bombs.”
“Got it,” Zoe said as she began lowering the rope. The rope hit the ground, and as soon as it did, Sam heard the vampiric children moving over to investigate it.
It was dark below, but with the first blast he fired off into the area, Sam was able to see the monsters, their bodies more transformed, something different about them than last time.
They started to hiss and screech, the smarter ones scrambling to get away. By this point, Zoe had dropped two of her cherry bombs, the explosions causing more noise than Sam would have liked.
He continued firing his weapon as Zoe dropped the last of her cherry bombs.
They listened for a moment, and once the smoke cleared below, Sam activated his sight power-up to see if any of them were still alive. There were bodies littered across the ground, limbs blown off, and he realized that the vampires weren’t actually dead, that they needed to knife them in the chest.
“Power-up, off.”
One look to Zoe was all it took to confirm what Sam was thinking, the tiger girl immediately taking to the rope, and making her way down.
“Just follow me,” she said.
Once Zoe got closer to the ground, Sam began his descent. He heard the sound of Zoe knifing vampires in the chest, terror coming into Sam’s heart as he lowered himself into the darkness.
Even as he heard Zoe continue below, Sam was scared, the most scared he had been in his entire life, but he was also determined to get down there and free his teammates.
He reached the ground, his feet landing in a mass of sticky goo.
“That should be all of them,” Zoe said, out of breath. “Can any of you hear us?” she asked to the center of the room, not at all paying attention to her surroundings as she looked up.
Completely in the dark, Sam looked at his wrist guard for a moment, noticing a backlit button on the side that he hadn’t noticed before. A hunch coming to him, he pointed his arm to the far wall and lightly tapped the button. A beam of light emitted from the weapon.
“Whew,” he said under his breath, glad that it hadn’t triggered an explosion or something.
“That’s helpful,” Zoe said.
“It would have been even more helpful if someone had told me about this feature earlier…”
“Different country, different tech,” Zoe said as Sam aimed the light up at the three. Helena was completely motionless, Ozella twitching a bit, Juniper completely still.
At least at first.
Sam saw Juniper’s fingers curl, the woman’s head start to move as she looked down to see where the light was coming from.
“Juniper!” Zoe said excitedly. “If you can hear me, shake your hand or something.”
Sam shone his beam at her hand, noticing as it started to shake.
“We’re going to blast you down,” said Zoe, “but we have no way to catch you. Can you do something with a rune that would give you a soft landing spot?”
“Maybe she could even cut herself down…” Sam started to say.
“I haven’t seen her use her power like that yet,” Zoe told him, both of them watching Juniper intensely for an answer. Eventually, she gave them the thumbs up signal.
“Okay, Sam, shoot her rope.”
“Will do,” Sam said as he aimed his wrist guard up, changing the selector to the setting that increased the size of his blast radius. He moved his hand to the right just a little, away from Helena’s rope, not wanting to cut hers as well.
And with a steady breath in, and a quick fucking prayer, Sam triggered the weapon.
The shot connected, Juniper started to fall, only to be caught by a sudden flash of energy, which allowed her to roll off to the side and drop to her hands and knees.
Zoe helped her up, letting Juniper use her shoulder for support.
“You came…” she said, her voice barely audible.
“Of course we came,” Zoe told her. “And I need you to cast the same spell so we can get them down as well. Can you do that?”
“I think I can…”
“No, I need you to tell me that you can do it. It’s too long of a drop.”
His wrist guard’s flashlight now pointed at Juniper, Sam noticed that there were cut marks along her arms. They were healed up some, but the pink flesh was still visible.
“Did they try to drain you?” Sam asked, remembering the dripping sound he had heard.
Juniper nodded. “I’ll explain… Later. I’m ready, Zoe. Let’s get the others.”
“All right, Sam, it’s all you.”
“Got it,” Sam told his ex as he pointed his wrist guard at a spot between the two ropes, one holding Helena upside down, and one holding Ozella. With a short breath out, Sam triggered his weapon, the two falling as soon as his blast cut through the ropes.
A flash of energy gave them a comfortable landing ground, Sam immediately moving over to them.
“Helena,” Sam said as he lifted her into her arms. Zoe did the same with Ozella, who had a bunch of blood smeared across her face, matting down her blond hair.
“Sam?” Helena whispered, her face bruised, parts of it bloodied, her white hair crimson.
A fury that Sam had never felt before swelled in his chest, nearly causing him to lose his balance. He wanted to go back up to the school grounds now and destroy the people who had done this to his teammates.
Sam could feel the hate in his gut now. He bit his lip as he looked down at Helena, the only light in the area provided by his wrist guard, which was striking the wall in front of him.
Maybe if he had been paying better attention, maybe if he hadn’t let his emotions take over, maybe then Sam would have seen the vampire approaching out of the corner of his eye, maybe he would have to even recognized this vampire as the brash one that was most curious back in the railcar.
But by then it was too late.
The vampire lunged for Sam. He fell sideways as the vampire landed on him and scurried to an easier target, Helena, the monster grabbing her and dragging her off into the dark.
His wrist guard’s lights flashing all around him, Sam saw Zoe practically drop Ozella as she took off after the vampire. She hurdled over the bodies on the ground, the tiger girl on all fours, her tail bobbing in the air as she tackled the vampire, who was already hunched over Helena, his face at the side of her neck.
Sam stumbled forward with his weapon drawn, keeping his light on Zoe as she tumbled around the vampire, her energy blade eventually activating and pressing out of the vampire’s back.
Zoe flipped him over and pulled her fists back, driving her blade into his chest repeatedly, the vampire gargling up blood, choking, dying.
“What about Helena?” Juniper said as she limped forward.
We Could Be Heroes 2 Page 33
