Death's Rival

breathing and coughing, clutching her throat. I pulled one of the special stakes and stabbed downward with both hands. The stake was way longer than my usual ones, at thirty inches. I rammed it into her belly. Blood sprayed up, but not the fountain I sometimes saw. I had missed her descending aorta. Caught on her belt buckle. I put my back into it.

The stake had a silver cap on the sharp end with a steel tip that I drove into the floor, pinning her down, poisoning her blood on the way through, in addition to the silver spraying into the air. She wasn’t true-dead, and she might even survive, but she was in a lot of pain. She wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.

Over the com gear, I learned that one of the rooftop teams was entering the second story. They had already secured three humans, all of whom were starting to wake up. I also heard heavy, steady breathing and the sound of blades clashing.

Clicking off the halogen light, I moved on through the room and out another door, into a larger room, maybe half the total square footage of the bottom story. The open area was dim, lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. Bruiser was already in the room. Part of the panting I heard over my com channel was him. He was fighting two very old, and very strong, vamps, one armed with a long sword and one bare-handed, claws extended.

I could barely follow the moves, the swoosh of afterimage giving it all a filmlike speed. Bruiser was fighting with a midsized blade in each hand and it was almost beautiful, poetry in motion. I had given him the blades two months ago, after I took them from the body of a vamp I’d killed. Bruiser had been mesmerized by them, calling them something Asian, in a language I didn’t recognize. He had obviously been practicing, and even more obvious —he was no novice. With the vamp-blood in his system, he was a master work of art. He flew through the moves, the blades an extension of his will and his mind. The vamps were bleeding. And Bruiser had removed his mask. I yanked mine off and it fell to the end of the flex strap to dangle behind me out of the way. I took an exploratory breath and smelled the egg-stink, but felt fine.

On the other side of Bruiser, a door opened and three more vamps entered. They were far closer to Bruiser and his fight than I was. Bruiser was good, but not one-on-five good. I ran right at them, screaming in challenge, a big-cat scream of rage. I pulled and tossed a flashbang and a CS canister at them. Shouted, “Flash!” hoping Bruiser would understand. I leaped right at the closest vamp, sliding my hand around the stock of the M4 in midair. Tucked my feet out of the way, and fired, closing my eyes.

The flashbang and CS went off. I opened my eyes just in time to land. I kicked laterally into a vamp’s knee joint. Heard the crunch over the ear protectors. He was falling down and away, coughing, his blood spouting from neck and chest, bubbling from the silver shotgun wounds. He was one of the vamps with acidic blood. It burned where it splattered on my exposed knuckles. I staked him in the belly, low down. Flipped him over and secured his hands with three zip strips, knowing they weren’t made for a vamp’s strength, but hoping the injuries and the silver he was breathing would weaken him enough to hold him for a while. He was coughing like he had a bad case of pneumonia or had just been pulled from the water, drowning. So were the other two vamps who had come in with him, both on the floor coughing and bleeding from the eyes, the silver mist in the air burning their skin. They looked like they both had really, really bad sunburns. Just to make sure they stayed down, I staked them both in the lower bellies and secured them with zip strips. I’d have to get some silvered strips. Yeah. Why hadn’t I thought about that before now?

I clicked off the light and turned to see Bruiser finish off the two he’d been fighting. He stabbed, twisted, and slid the blade out of one. That vamp fell to his knees. Bruiser cut across a biceps of the last one, hitting bone, and caught the long sword the vamp dropped. Using the new blade, he took the vamp’s head, whirled, and took the head of the other one.

“There can be only one,” I murmured, and started laughing. Bruiser turned to me so fast I felt the air blow past my face. He swung the long sword back to attack. Beast slammed into me and I leaped away, across the room, landed, and pulled both Walthers. “Bruiser? It’s Jane.”

The room went still. Bruiser’s face was emotionless, a mask. No recognition, no warmth. He hesitated for a space of three heartbeats. He advanced on me, stepping fastfastfast.

“Don’t make me shoot you,” I said, backing away.

One of the vamps I had staked and secured kicked out at me, drawing Bruiser’s attention. That was all I needed. I dove at him, swinging, knocking his head with the butt of the gun in my right hand. Not a nice way to treat a handgun, not to mention a head. They hit together with a satisfying thud and Bruiser dropped, catching himself with his open sword hand, holding the long sword with only a finger and thumb. When he looked up, he shook his head. “Jane?”

“Yeah. We’ll talk about this later. Six vamps down. Weapons fire from upstairs.” I pointed across the room. “We need to check that.” That was the old bank vault and the specially built safe room to its side.

We moved slowly across the open space to the room. It was built from cinder block reinforced with rebar and concrete. It had its own roof, flat and smelling of tar paper, about three feet from the warehouse ceiling. My eyes had acclimated to the dimness of the windowless place, but the inside of the room was blacker than pitch. I pulled the halogen light from my belt and shined it into the room.

The room was twelve feet square, with a six-foot-across circle in the middle made of salt. There was no pentagram, no runes, no magical elements to guide a witch in a working. But there was a body. A recently dead body. She was hanging from the rafters by a rope, her big toes barely touching the floor. She was naked. With a stake in her heart. Her fangs were small, marking her as, maybe, a hundred years old.

“Sacrifice,” Bruiser said.

“Yeah. And her blood smells funny.”

“One of the sick ones.”

“I’d say so,” I said, turning for the old bank vault. I shined my light inside. The metal shelves were bare. Whatever had been planned for this room either hadn’t been finished or had been carted out already.

“Report,” Eli said into my earpieces.

The fighters upstairs started reporting in. “One old vamp DB. Two humans contained. No injuries. Did not sight de Allyon.” In the shorthand Derek used for ops, DB meant dead body, contained meant uninjured and restrained. No injuries referred to the men under Derek’s command. Not de Allyon meant the vamp wasn’t the one we were after.

“Danced with three humans, now contained. They were waking up and we had to hurt ’em some. No injuries. Did not sight de Allyon.” It sounded like Tequila Blue Voodoo, proving that Derek had brought a mixed party of his men.

“One young fanghead DB, two humans contained. We’re beat all to hell and back, but don’t need anything except beer,” Angel Tit said. “Did not sight de Allyon.”

“One vamp, age indeterminate, DB, two injuries. Medic needed for John. Not life-threatening. I need a couple of stitches,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Did not sight de Allyon.” I thought it was El Diablo, who I had last seen feeding a vamp on the field of battle.

Eli said, “One old sucker DB. I’ll be joining you for those stitches and that beer.” The men chuckled. “Cheek Sneak and I did not sight de Allyon.”

“No vamps encountered,” Rick said. “Three humans contained, no injuries, did not sight de Allyon.

Bruiser said, “Two old vamps DB.” The mics went silent for that one. Bruiser had taken down two very old vampires. Single-handedly. “Did not sight de Allyon,” he said. “But we did find one younger vamp, DB, on ice, true-dead.” He looked at me and grinned, teasing. “Legs? That leaves you.”

I frowned at him. Into my mic I said, “One human contained. Four old vamps contained.” The radio traffic went silent. “No injuries. Did not sight de Allyon,” I added, that important piece of info just hitting me.

“She buggered the rest of you and left us some vamps to chat with,” Bruiser said. “Janie wins the pool.”

There was a pool?

“This I gotta see,” one of the guys said.

“Not until we go over this place with a fine-tooth comb. Lock it down,” Eli said. “We want de Allyon.”

Bruiser and I quartered off the lower floor and went through it again. There weren’t many rooms, only one unisex toilet, and no closets or hiding places. It was fast work. “First floor clear,” I said into the mic. We started up to the second floor. Five steps in, I heard something and looked back. “Correction. Two coming this way.”

That was when we were hit with the second wave. Vamps came rushing out of the new, empty safe room