Eldritch Ops

by Phipps, C. T.

“Will you help me kill Dracula first?” I asked, wondering if it was really possible to kill the Warlord forever.

  “Tiamat-Abaddon herself couldn’t keep me away.”

  Before I could say anything else, the elevators behind me pinged and revealed someone was coming up. Taking position in front of them, Christopher picked up his gun and aimed it beside me. It felt like we were partners again, two against the world.

  “Don’t shoot until you know they’re unfriendly.”

  “Are there any friendlies here?”

  “More than you’d think.”

  My statement proved to be accurate, as the doors opened to reveal Malcolm, Penny, Shannon, Shadow and the twins, Night and Day—all wearing wetsuits covered in stolen Kevlar. They were sporting stolen assault rifles and bandoliers of grenades. The other three werewolves were missing. From Malcolm’s somber look, it wasn’t that difficult to believe they’d suffered casualties getting here.

  “Christopher?” Shannon said, looking at him then me.

  “Hey, Red,” Christopher said. “I owe your boyfriend one.”

  “Damn straight you do,” I said.

  Shannon tossed down her gun and embraced him.

  I looked between the two of them. “A lesser man might be jealous.”

  They kissed.

  “Don’t be,” Shannon said, giving Christopher another hug.

  Penny didn’t pay attention. “Derek, we’ve got a serious pro—oh my god, Rebecca.”

  Penny ran to the side of our fallen sister and took her by the arm. She clutched her to her chest and held her.

  “What happened?” Penny asked, her voice shaking.

  I thought of all the times my sister had looked after Rebecca, babysitting or helping her study for the Black Room.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said, closing my eyes. “Malcolm, what’s the situation down there?’

  I ignored the fact that I’d told them to stay put. Clearly, Shannon had chosen to defy my order.

  Not that I was in any position to point fingers.

  “Stone and Hyperion were killed by the Silverblade,” Malcolm said, looking cold. “Shannon managed to hold him as we enacted our blood-price, though. We left Cobalt behind to guard the survivors we’ve rescued. He’s unlikely to kill them all. How many shapechangers died here?”

  “A lot,” I said, staring at him. “They’re dead now or will be soon.”

  Malcolm looked at Rebecca, then me, putting the pieces together in his head. His next words said everything that needed to be said. “I’ll tell the Council you took care of this. That should be enough.”

  “Who’s that?” Night asked, pointing at Christopher, still holding Shannon.

  “A friend,” I said. “Despite how he’s holding my girl.”

  Shannon glared at me.

  “Great, now we have a Fang in the gang,” Shadow said. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling. “I try. Now, we can do one of two things. We can slip quietly away or—”

  “Dracula’s downstairs,” Christopher interrupted, breaking from Shannon. “Derek knows how to kill him. Forever.”

  “You heard all that?” I did a double take.

  “I am a spy,” Christopher said, shrugging.

  Shannon walked back to me. “Then I guess we know where we’re going next.”

  I looked at Malcolm and Penny.

  Penny rose from Rebecca’s corpse. “I’m in.”

  Malcolm looked at his remaining pack. “I have lost two good friends today. They will torment me in the afterlife forever if I don’t make their deaths count.”

  I slapped my hands together and rubbed. “Okay, time to get Hammer Horror on his ass then.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Camp Zero was being sacked.

  That was the only word for it as my group moved from the prison to the barracks of Camp Zero. It was one of the bloodiest warzones I’d seen in my life, and I’d seen dozens. Despite my attempts to help the defenders put up a fight, we’d passed numerous bodies that had been raped, drained of blood, torn apart, or some combination thereof.

  The victims of the draugr were especially hideous. The ghoul-like creatures didn’t restrict themselves to drinking the blood of their victims but devoured them whole. Several times, we’d come across people being eaten alive. Lacking proper medical care and having no magic, there was nothing to do but put a bullet in the head of the dying after finishing off their attackers.

  The mayhem of the vampires wasn’t limited to slaughter. It was surreal, but even though this place was a prison, the vampires were trying to loot its contents. There were firefights among them, duels with swords, and even battles with their bare-handed claws.

  When they couldn’t come across living victims, they trashed whatever equipment or furniture they could find. Their history as pirates was not so distant a memory, it seemed. Either that, or the undead made it a point to recruit psychotic criminals.

  Whatever the case, the defeat of Camp Zero’s forces made it easier to sneak around through the place, and the extra gunfire when we ambushed the small groups that remained didn’t hurt. They were too busy enjoying their “victory” to note that there were still living soldiers moving around the base, and there was no sign of organization to their horde. A few vampires had radios, but they weren’t all that interested in using them.

  I was taking point, having searched several dead guards for appropriate body armor and weapons. Christopher was at my side, using his status as a well-known vampire to get a few of them to lower their guard. Penny was in the middle, the perfect position to aid us with her magic, while the werewolves and Shannon followed up the rear. The whole thing felt like one of the video games I often kicked back with, only a lot more serious.

  Surprise was on our side, and by the time we started nearing where Christopher indicated Dracula was, we’d eliminated almost twenty attackers without any of them being able to call for help. The werewolves were uncomfortable using firearms versus their claws, but I was trying to keep us inconspicuous.

  We were nearing the end of the barracks and coming to a tunnel that led to one of the other “balls” when Christopher pointed to an open doorway, beside which a V in a circle was drawn in blood on the wall.

  “We’re getting close to Dracula.” Christopher also looked nervous, as if all the blood around us was testing his patience.

  “How close?” I asked, having relied on their connection to get us this far.

  “Very close.” Christopher looked away from a headless corpse nearby. “Close enough that he’ll start picking up my presence soon, even if he’s not looking for it.”

  “That’s . . . not good.”

  “It might be,” Christopher corrected. “With any luck, he thinks you’re dead and I’m coming to report back in.”

  “How the hell did he know where I was, anyway?”

  Christopher glanced sideways at me. “I’ve kind of been following you since the incident at the blood slave safe house.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Malcolm, standing behind him, added, “What?”

  “I was there with Skull Squadron,” Christopher said, staring down at his feet. “When they fucked things up, I went invisible. The bit with the Chevrolet was hilarious, by the way. Sorry about sending the djinn after you.”

  “You better be sorry about it,” Shannon said, growling. She was a mixture of emotions about Christopher’s return, and I was going to have to talk about where we stood on this. A part of me felt hypocritical feeling jealous, given our earlier conversation and my attraction to Bloody Mary, especially since Christopher was on our side.

  Probably.

  “Any chance your Phantom-suit will help with Dracula?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” Christopher said. “Everything I can do, he can do better, and several times, no less. That includes seeing through technological illusions like this new House tech can do.”

  “I am not afraid
of Dracula,” Malcolm said, puffing up his chest.

  “You should be,” Christopher said. “You got yourself killed by a bunch of dhampir. He’s a whole new ballgame.”

  “They had assault rifles,” Malcolm snapped.

  “So will Dracula’s men. They’re psychopaths, not stupid.” Christopher glared at the werewolf. Since he’d joined the group, the already palpable tension had gotten worse. It was just the promise of bigger game in Dracula that kept them from tearing into each other.

  “You were killed, Pack Lord?” Shadow asked.

  “It is unimportant,” Malcolm said, looking away.

  Shadow growled, turning from him.

  I snapped my fingers, drawing everyone’s attention to me. “I don’t suppose anyone has any suggestions for getting Dracula alone when we get to him? Even with all of the army spread through this place, he’s going to have guards.”

  “Challenge him to a duel,” Christopher said. “He’ll be honor-bound to accept.”

  “Really?”

  “Fuck no. What do you think this is, a movie?” Christopher shook his head. “We may be in a better position to ambush him than you might think, though. Black Squadron was part of his personal entourage, and a bunch of others didn’t survive the destruction of Dracula’s jet. Besides, any vampire who guards him is ornamental. He’s the real threat.”

  “How tough are we talking here?” I asked, wondering at our chances.

  “Remember the Lord of Chains?” Christopher said, bringing up the fallen demigod who represented Haiti’s history of slavery.

  “The one who ended up dying because we had a chain gun on the back of a car and LAW rockets?”

  “Those would be very helpful right now,” Christopher said. “He’s got the power of an archwizard and a body that has absorbed the strength of thousands of dead. About the only thing we’ve got going for us is that you have the Bloodsword and its demon.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not bothering to inform him that Mary had decided to take a hike.

  Signaling for everyone to follow, we headed through the door and found ourselves descending into the basement level of Camp Zero. All along the wall, there were pictures of the staff celebrating various milestones and holidays. It was hard to reconcile their cruel, almost inhuman experiments with the images of people giving each other hugs or celebrating Christmas.

  Then again, I was an assassin approaching three hundred kills. For close to a decade and a half, I’d killed and killed for the House. When I started, they told me all of my victims were evil and produced evidence to support that claim. Later, I stopped asking. Had Camp Zero started that way, or were the researchers here untroubled by such worries?

  I knew people who were loving parents and spouses yet were willing to do unspeakable things to supernatural beings. They just didn’t count as people to them. One agent I’d sanctioned, my first kill in fact, had gone on a killing spree because she’d discovered her husband had latent fairy blood. Her first victim had been her son upon his manifesting Redcap traits.

  Comparing the monstrous acts performed by the staff and the vampires, it was hard not to draw the conclusion that neither humans nor supernaturals were the “real monsters.” No, the evidence said both were, and we were far more similar than we gave ourselves credit for. Gods help us all.

  We turned around a corner and the interior of the hallway started to stink of blood. It was a smell, along with ripe, open intestines, that was unmistakable. The smell was more concentrated here than in the rest of the Camp, though, and there were indistinct hideous animal noises coming from down the hall.

  I made a “shh” gesture before advancing, Christopher falling a step behind. Looking back, I saw his fangs were out, and he looked like he was trying desperately to concentrate. It was hard to imagine what he’d gone through these past few years.

  I’d always assumed vampires had some natural instinct or sociopathic tendency that allowed them to do the things they did. If mesmerism was the reason vampires were capable of killing humans for food, then I’d done Christopher as much a disservice as a favor by freeing him of his conditioning.

  “Do we need to fall back?” I mouthed.

  Christopher shook his head and waved me forward, pulling out his pistol and lifting it above his head. Unlike the rest of us, he didn’t use an assault rifle. That was because with his “new and improved” reflexes, headshots were never a problem—even against targets as fast as him. He was like a sniper with a handgun.

  I nodded and mouthed, “All right.”

  Moving around the corner, I saw something from a horror film. As if the rest of the nightmare wasn’t bad enough, a hallway of carnage greeted us. A dozen draugr were crouched over the dead, feasting on arms, legs, and even heads they’d cracked open to get the brains inside.

  Draugr were hideous things, existing in the uncanny valley between human and corpse, their faces sunken in and their skin stretched tight against their skulls. These were older examples of their kind, so their noses had rotted off and bat-like patagia had formed between their arms and bodies.

  Their ears had also expanded, becoming large circular things that stretched out. The draugr were a mixture of races but their skin had lost all pigment, becoming albino-white. They didn’t bother with clothes, moving around naked on the ground amongst the filth and gore.

  Yet as bad as the draugr were, it was the pair of dhampir at the end of the hall who were the worst. A man and a woman in working-class sailor’s attire, the pair were surveying the draugr and looking bored during the process. The woman was rocking back and forth on her feet and it took me a second to realize she was listening to an iPod.

  I told myself I was shooting them first for strategic purposes, but as they noticed me, I pulled down the trigger for other reasons. I wanted them to die. The insides of their chests exploded as I fired the M90 into both of their ribcages. The bullets inside the gun were exploding orihalcum rounds, doubly dangerous to monsters but with twice as much recoil.

  The draugr all looked up at once, their gore-filled mouths dripping as they sensed new prey. I fell to my knees and started firing upwards, Penny lifting her staff up and sending the first six flying backward. Christopher fired at them, rapidly sending shot after shot into their sides, but the others came up behind them. The draugr ran up the sides of the walls and crawled on the ceiling, leaping with inhuman speed and unspeakable hunger.

  Thankfully, we had hungry and fast predators of our own. The other attacking draugr were smashed from the air by three huge grey-furred wolves that tore into them. I kept firing over their heads into the draugr while Christopher and Shannon shot over my head. The ringing in my ears was tremendous as draugr heads exploded and others fell down.

  Several seconds later, there were a lot more corpses spread across the ground. The draugr were dismembered, torn to shreds and being feasted on the same way they had done to others. It was no less unsettling when being done by my allies.

  Getting up, I felt my right ear. The ringing inside both ears was terrible. “This is why I try and wear earplugs before combat.”

  “Please . . .” The female dhampir was still alive, my bullets having missed her heart. She stretched her hand out, a last-ditch attempt to save her life.

  Christopher strode through the blood and werewolf butchery to kneel beside her and stick his fangs into her neck. I looked away as he tore away the last few moments of the woman’s life, sucking on the wound.

  “Okay, that’s disgusting.” Penny covered her mouth and nose. The stench of carnage around us was overwhelming.

  I was used to it.

  “Come on, we don’t have much time,” I said, imagining what would happen once Dracula’s makeshift army finished their revelry and started regrouping.

  Shannon said, “Why would Dracula even create draugr?”

  “Pretty damn intimidating, aren’t they?” I asked, watching the Dead Coyotes shift back to their human forms, clothing intact. “I bet he keeps pits of these
things and tosses prisoners down them like it’s the fifteenth century.”

  Christopher broke away from the corpse he’d drained. “He does.”

  I’d been kidding. “Okay, how far are we from him?”

  “He’s right down the hall,” Christopher said, getting up. His face was blank, empty of emotion. “We’re almost done.”

  “Good,” Shannon said, looking at the corpses. “I want a piece of him every bit as much as the next person.”

  “If the next person is me, you really don’t,” Christopher said, walking forward. He paid no attention to formation and moved like a zombie. I had no idea if it was because this was his first feeding since being free or if it had to do with Dracula’s presence. Either way, I reluctantly followed him and everyone else moved to do the same, our shoes sloshing in the crimson mire underneath us.

  The group proceeded down yet another hallway, this one opening to a large warehouse filled with dozens of metal shipping crates, racks of equipment, scaffolding, and ramps leading up to garage entrances. It was too large to properly secure, and crossing the area would put us in danger of being ambushed. The place was huge, easily the size of a football stadium. A reminder of how big this place really was.

  Christopher pointed to the end of the warehouse, which had a yellow door beside yet another garage door entrance. “There.”

  I didn’t like this. “Christopher, are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I feel his presence. It’s all-encompassing. Like a black hole that wants to suck me back in.”

  Shannon raised her gun behind his back, her face a mix of emotions. All of them tortured.

  I shook my head at her.

  She nodded.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I’m never going to be okay again, but you can tell Shannon to lower her gun. I’m not going to turn on you.”

  “I already did.”

  Christopher gave a short laugh. “You were too trusting, then.”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve been made.” Christopher looked up.

  Looking up, I saw on the ceiling were nine more vampires. These were different from the rest of them. They were wearing stealth suits like Christopher but had disengaged their invisibility and were aiming laser-sight sniper rifles at our chests. One of them fell to the ground, landing on her feet before removing a mask to reveal the face of Elizabeth Cambridge.