Not a hungry monster.
I was tempted to go for my gun or the Bloodsword to try and stop him, but a number of factors kept me from moving. One, he was doing the dirty work I needed to do. The people here had to die to shut down Camp Zero. If I tried to stop Ruthford, Annabelle would be able to kill me before I could draw my weapon. I needed to wait for the right moment and hope Bloody Mary had my back.
Always, Bloody Mary said, her voice amused. Even when I’m trying to kill you.
“You broke his conditioning,” Rebecca said, narrowing her eyes. “How?”
Annabelle let out a short laugh. “Ha! That is what you’re concerned about when you see a massacre of your coworkers and friends?”
“They can be replaced,” Rebecca said. “How?”
I did a double take, looking at my sister like she was a different person.
Annabelle seemed amused by Rebecca’s question. “Your torture and mind games are capable of breaking most beings, but the bond between a vampire and his creator is not so easily dashed aside. It took centuries for me to overcome my loyalty to Dracula.”
On the monitors, I saw the attack had begun. Bloodslaves, draugr, dhampirs, and vampires were descending on Camp Zero. The mindless undead were there to soak up bullets and intimidate the living while the humans thinned their ranks. The vampires and their half-human offspring then descended on any survivors.
We were in it deep now.
“So why are you keeping us alive?” I asked the obvious question. I had a sneaking suspicion it was vanity. When you reached a certain age as an immortal parasite, you had to take life’s pleasures where you got them.
“To give you an ounce of the suffering you have inflicted upon the world with your service to the Illuminated ones. Both as their minion and a member of their Council of False Kings,” Annabelle said as a blood-soaked John Ruthford appeared beside her.
Annabelle lifted her right hand and I felt agonizing pain across my body. Like Dracula, Annabelle was a blood magician and possessed the same sorts of powers he’d used to incapacitate me before.
“Scream for me,” Annabelle said. “I’ll get your father and family eventually. Ruthford, when they cry out, kill them both.”
Ruthford grinned, his fangs shining. “With pleasure.”
Falling to my knees, I felt Bloody Mary protect me from the worst of the pain, and my hand moved for the Bloodsword.
Right before Rebecca hissed, “You forgot, Annabelle, I am a psychic surgeon.”
Rebecca raised her right palm in front of not Annabelle but Ruthford and closed it. The vampire terrorist exploded like a popped balloon, showering all of us in gore. Annabelle’s spell was disrupted right before I pulled the Bloodsword free and slashed off the Elder vampire’s arms, both exploding into ash as they were separated from her body.
Annabelle hissed, and a shower of blood appeared from her wounds before forming into new arms, a display of mystical power I’d never seen before. She knocked the Bloodsword from my hands before grabbing me by the shoulders and throwing me across the room. I slammed against a set of monitors and rolled across the ground.
Time seemed to slow down as Annabelle moved to kill Rebecca. I reached into my jacket and pulled out my RC-82 before firing it several times into Annabelle’s back. The orihalcum bullets struck into the vampire’s heart but didn’t kill her. Instead, she turned around and transformed into a hideous cloud of black smoke. The smoke seemed to possess features, the faces of screaming children and men visible in its back. It was one of the most hideous things I’d ever seen.
I fired repeatedly, but my bullets did nothing to harm it. Each was soaked up in the smoke, which melted a set of computers it passed through. I had one chance and cast down my gun before grabbing the ring in my pocket. The smoke enveloped me only for me to lash out with the darkness I had in my soul. The shadow magic Bloody Mary had taught me flew freely this time and with ease in every direction.
The smoke screamed.
The toxic black mist around me exploded, scattering in every direction. I saw horrifying images of draugr, pirates, Pantheon Corp towers, myself, and Dracula as Annabelle’s magic collided with mine. Several control panels caught fire and a sprinkler system started pouring water down on our heads.
There was no sign of Annabelle. I stumbled over, collapsing from the exertion. I found it small comfort that my evil was greater than Annabelle’s. I felt a brief kinship with the woman in that moment but knew at heart she was a victim lashing out—and I was a predator.
“Derek, are you okay?” Rebecca asked, confused. She looked dazed from her sudden and brutal victory over Ruthford.
Impressive. Mary’s voice spoke in my head. Shadow magic is an art you have great talent for. Your control is poor, though. You’ve filled your body with more black magic than I’ve seen anyone survive. You should see a doctor about that.
Is Annabelle gone? I asked, surprised how relieved I was by my demon’s survival. I didn’t bother to entertain her request. I wasn’t that far gone, yet.
I doubt it. Like Dracula, you must break one’s connection with Tiamat-Abaddon to slay one such as her, Bloody Mary said. Are you willing to wrestle with Hell’s ruler for that?
Yeah, I am, I said.
Interesting, Bloody Mary said.
“I’m fine, Rebecca. We just need to get this place’s defenses back on,” I replied, climbing to my feet and wiping the gore off my body.
“Agreed,” Rebecca said. “Camp Zero is too important to lose.”
I shook my head, ready to strangle her. Instead, I picked up my gun off the ground. I was down to a half clip.
Rebecca stumbled forward, passing several corpses along the way. She slumped over one of the control panels and batted away a blood-soaked lock of hair before starting to type away at a keyboard. Several small holographic icons appeared, which she moved around like she was on the set of a science fiction film.
“How long will it take to get this place back and running?” I asked, looking down at the ground.
“We can’t,” Rebecca said, sighing. “They’ve locked me out of the security protocols. It was a mistake to trust Ruthford with so much.”
“You think?” I deadpanned.
“No time for recriminations,” Rebecca said. “I’ve got important things to do.”
“Like?”
“I’m dumping the research data and destroying the intranet backups on site. We can’t have our information falling into the hands of vampires. It would turn their superstition-driven knowledge of mesmerism into a grand science,” Rebecca said, pulling out a magitech-enhanced flash drive from the side. She then tossed it to me. “You need to protect this research with your life. There’s over a thousand terabytes inside.”
I caught it. Getting her data was proving surprisingly easy. “What about off-site backups?”
“We had two server farms, but they were destroyed by terrorist attacks. I love our father, but the security he provided both was shit. Most of the surviving research is hard copy below, and we’ll have to blow that as well.”
I tried not to smile. “I understand.”
My joy left me as Rebecca turned and inputted another code. The room’s ceiling lights turned an eerie shade of red as the alarms blaring were far more menacing than the earlier fuchsia alert siren.
All across the room, the holograms and screens showed the prison cells filling with a thick white smoke. The prisoners banged against the side of the walls, thrashed on the ground, or simply ignored the smoke as they mindlessly rocked themselves. The living amongst them started violently retching, throwing up, while the undead acted like they were having a seizure.
Soon, they were still.
“Rebecca, what have you done?” I asked, staring in horror.
“Purple Alert,” Rebecca said, breathing hard. “We can’t have any of the subjects escape. Orihalcum dust mixed with sarin. What a waste.”
“Of subjects?”
“What else?” Rebecca sa
id, looking nonplussed.
I looked to one of the monitors, which listed a figure of 1,031 casualties. A tiny number when compared to the seven billion across the world. Yet it was an extraordinary amount of lost time and memories. Some of them had undoubtedly deserved to die, yes, but not all. Not all.
I made my choice.
My sister was a monster.
I hunted monsters.
“Tell me, Rebecca, would you put Shannon through all this if you got your hands on her?”
Rebecca looked up, confused. She turned her head and then the rest of her body to face me, crossing her arms. Her expression told me she was less than interested in the contents of my question, as if I were wasting her time. “Derek, don’t be sentimental.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t be.”
I lifted up my gun and shot her in the chest.
My hand shook after the act.
Rebecca looked confused, sliding against the control panel behind her. A large red circle grew around her chest area, my gun having shot her just to the side of the heart. The wound was fatal, but it would take a few minutes for her to die.
So I shot her in the head.
I looked down at her body. My damnation was sealed, but hadn’t it been a long time ago? “What a waste.”
I dropped the flash drive on the ground and smashed it to pieces with my foot.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I stared at Rebecca’s corpse for a long time. Long enough for the sprinkler system to stop pouring water. I didn’t know what the proper time was to stop. What was the right length of time to look at your sister’s corpse when there was a crisis? How long did you subtract or add when you were the one who pulled the trigger? Looking up to the damaged controls and monitors around me, I couldn’t deny we were in the middle of a crisis. The Vampire Nation’s forces had already penetrated Camp Zero and looked like they were overwhelming the guards present.
I still had a job to do and that wasn’t changing. I needed to find the backups for Rebecca’s research and destroy them. Then I needed to get off this hellhole and figure out a way to make sure the House was prepared for whatever attacks happened next.
This isn’t your responsibility, Bloody Mary said. You don’t have to be the one who serves as your brother’s keeper.
I’m already Cain, I said, looking over at Rebecca’s corpse again. Don’t try and talk to me in Biblical parable.
She deserved to die, Bloody Mary said.
So did I, I said.
Heading to one of the few remaining functioning control panels, I tried to draw up a schematic of the building. Along the way, I heard comm traffic from the scientists and guardsmen being slaughtered by Dracula’s forces. It was a warzone out there, and they’d been crippled before combat had even begun. Humans versus monsters, and logic told me both needed to be taken down. Emotionally, though, I was on the side of the humans.
Accessing the security feeds, I lifted a headset off a corpse and put it on. “Camp Zero security, this is Committee member Hawthorne. What is your status?”
A flurry of responses filled my headset as I heard gunfire, screams, calm voices, and the sounds of war. Over half of Camp Zero’s military forces were dead and almost as many in terms of personnel. No one had any idea how many hostiles were attacking, what direction they were coming from, or who was in the most danger. The fog of war was on the side of the Vampire Nation and it was killing everyone here.
Calling up images from all of the security cameras spread around Camp Zero, I did my best to try and direct the defenders. That, I could help with. “Team C, reinforce Team B in block 17. Teams A and D are destroyed, ignore any calls from them for reinforcement. Team G, I need you to take a collection of C4 to block four and blow up the file collections there. This is high priority. Team Y, prepare for assault from the southwest corridor. You’ve got incoming hostiles. Everyone else, hold your positions and dig in until we can get an organized evacuation going.”
A series of affirmatives answered me before I also checked the rest of the systems to see if I could get any of the camp’s defenses working again. Annabelle and Ruthford had done a number on the interior security systems. I wasn’t a hacker, either, so I couldn’t get the majority of them back online.
What I could do was shut the metal doors on several of Dracula’s goons. It wouldn’t do much in the long run, especially given that I saw they’d already infiltrated Camp Zero’s armory, but it would give the defending forces some breathing room.
“Derek?” Shannon’s voice spoke in my earpiece.
“Shannon?”
“No, it’s the Easter Bunny. We’re on the island’s southern tip. Nathan sent us a blind spot to bring our boat in. All hell has broken loose.”
“No kidding.”
Penny spoke as well. “There’s a hidden set of docks here. A bunch of the janitorial staff and some soldiers accompanying them are trying to flee here. I torched a set of draugr led by some sort of kennel master. The vampires are using them like dogs to sniff out the living. What do you want us to do with the survivors?”
“Is Malcolm with you?” I asked.
There was a sound like a microphone being grabbed. “You think we run away like yapping dogs? You don’t know us, yo.”
“I was worried you’d go on a rampage.”
“That’s better, D. There’s dignity in that.”
“He arrived with a pack of his brothers. Six very beefy black werewolf-looking dudes. The guards are rather freaked out by them. I had to turn their guns into salamanders to keep a firefight from breaking out,” Penny spoke.
“Can you do that?” I tried to imagine what she was saying.
“Okay, I just made them jam, but it was cooler sounding my way. What do you want us to do with the survivors?”
It occurred to me Nathan Hawthorne would have wanted me to let them die. I didn’t take orders from my father, though. “I’m going to inform the rest of the security any werewolves they see are on our side. I don’t see any shape-shifters amongst Dracula’s people anyway. Try and keep the survivors secure and I’m going to try and get an evacuation going.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Penny asked. “We’re here to shut this place down.”
I looked over at Rebecca. “I’ve taken care of the problem. Once we get the evacuation going, I’ll radio the American government to bomb this place to the Stone Age. With any luck, Dracula will get caught in the explosion.”
“That won’t do you any good,” Christopher’s voice said behind me. “Because you’ll already be dead.”
“Oh sh—”
For the second time in half an hour, I found myself being thrown across the room. This time, I was able to manipulate my body’s ki to harden my muscles and avoid getting my entire back bruised when I hit the wall. My gun, however, flew out of my hands. It hit the wall, discharging a bullet through a nearby window before clattering to the ground several feet away.
Christopher stood there, his business suit replaced with an all-black, form-fitting Phantom-suit like the kind Sons of Mars mercenaries had used to infiltrate Division One last year. On Christopher, it reminded me of a ninja’s attire, which amused me since they were about the one thing I’d never fought before.
There were numerous blood splatters on Christopher’s clothes, and I had to wonder how many people he’d killed on his way inside. Given he had both the natural stealth abilities of a vampire and the invisibility provided by the Phantom-suit, I no longer questioned how he’d gotten most of his information. He’d probably been walking the corridors of Camp Zero for weeks.
I also noticed Christopher had a silencer-equipped RC-214 in his right hand, which meant he was fully capable of killing me without touching me. Not that I could put up much of a fight right now. The events of the past twenty minutes had exhausted me, and I wasn’t in the right headspace for doing battle with my ex-partner.
Coughing, my lungs inexplicably feeling tight, I covered my mouth. Pulling it away, I sa
w it was soaked in blood. Looking up to Christopher, I said, “So, that’s how it’s going to be? Forget all the David and Jonathan stuff. You’re just going to kill me.”
Christopher didn’t aim his RC-214 at me. Instead, he just kept it facing the ground. “It would appear I’m not in control of my actions.”
“Yeah, your AI doppelganger told me you were mind controlled.”
Christopher smiled. “You have no idea how much effort it took to make sure I could make it free of Dracula’s control. My entire life as a vampire, I have thought I was acting with free will. Yet now, here, I realize everything was a lie.”
I thought of my relationship to the Red Room. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
Christopher aimed the RC-214 up at my head then jerked it to one side, shooting one of the damaged control panels. “I am capable of resisting to a limited extent. Dracula’s orders were quite clear, though. Since you went off script, I am to kill you.”
I didn’t go for the Bloodsword or the gun on the ground. I could have drawn both to my hands. Instead, I just looked at my ex-partner. The person who’d helped Ashley get to freedom. “There’s been a huge number of double, triple, and quadruple crosses around here. Dracula was playing you to get to me, Annabelle was playing you to get to Dracula, Nathan was playing Rebecca, I was playing Rebecca, and all of us were playing each other.”
“Amazing how all of this has come to a head because you’re immune to being mind controlled.” Christopher aimed his gun at my head again. This time, he jerked it at the last second and fired above me.
“I wouldn’t give myself too much credit. Ashley did something to my brain to protect me from mind-readers. It’s possible she supercharged my resistance while she was at it.”
“Always humble. You will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered,” Christopher quoted The Prisoner. “Your life is your own. Whether it is because of your own will or a gift of love doesn’t matter. The fact is you have a freedom I have never so envied.”
“You can fight this, Chris.”
“I’m trying to, believe me,” Christopher said, starting to advance, the gun in his hand pointed at my heart. “Yet Dracula has been fine-tuning my mind for years. He’s my sire, I’m sorry to say. I never had a chance to disobey him.”
Eldritch Ops Page 27
