to held a thousand gallons of baptismal water. And now we knew it would work against vamps.
I pulled two more vials, just in case. Eli braced himself, met Bruiser’s eyes, and nodded. Bruiser tried the door. This one was locked, which was going to make our job harder, but we had planned for vamps with brains and good security personnel.
The former Ranger quickly placed charges of plastic explosives at the sites of the hinges and the lock. While he worked, we all backed into the relative safety of the stairwell. I had to hand it to him: the guy was fast, unwinding the det cord behind himself as fast as he could shuffle. I didn’t know what we would be facing, so I screwed the tops back on the vial and pulled a blade and an ash stake. The last two vamps had been normal vamps. The old methods of vamp fighting should work.
Protected by the wall, he looked at us until he had our attention and counted down silently, mouth moving:
Bruiser hit the holy water switch. I could see his fingers move. He was too late. A fraction of a fraction of a second too late.
Two vamps moved at us so fast, there would have been a pop of air had any of us been able to hear it.
In my peripheral vision, I saw holy water shooting out of the nozzle like a hundred tiny jets. And Rick, with his mouth on a vamp’s neck. A spray of blood flew into the air from his jaws.
Beast-fast, I stabbed up with an ash stake, hitting my attacker in the abdomen. She fell, the wood taking her in the central artery leading down to her legs. Immobilizing her. Her blood cascaded over my right leg. I dropped her, holding the stake in place as she fell.
The holy water hit the next two vamps in midair. They screamed and did ninety-degree turns, bouncing off the walls. They raced away, screaming in agony. I looked at Rick. He was rising from under the vamp that landed on him. The vamp had an ash stake in his heart and only half of his throat left, the bones of the spinal column visible. But he was still alive, gasping. I figured he’d heal. Sooner or later.
Rick’s eyes were glowing green. He had fangs on his upper and lower jaw. Eli and Bruiser were backing slowly away from him. Rick spat and snarled, his human skin and flesh stretching like a cat’s. Gently, slowly, I lifted my arm and my hand to him. And took up an earpiece. My ears were covered by the helmet, but I could hear tinny sounds of music from it. I lifted the piece toward Rick.
He jerked his head away but kept his eyes on me. I stopped all movement and waited, barely daring to breathe. Rick’s face relaxed just a hair as the music became audible to him too. Then his mouth closed. I placed the earpiece in his ear. His eyes lost some of the glow and darkened toward his usually Frenchy-black eyes. He took the other earpiece and put it in. He chuffed out a breath. “Thanks,” he said. The word was slurred as his mouth tried to return to human. “Don’ wanna get stuck partway.” Which might happen if Rick ever changed to his big-cat, thanks to the tattoos on his shoulder.
“Pain bad?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll stay back here for the other door,” he said, “and cover my ears. Don’t get yourself killed.”
“Not my plan,” I said.
“You two finished playing nice-nice? Good.” Eli said, his own words a snarl, nearly as good as a big-cat’s. “Six vamps inside,” he said, “clustered at the back of the room, probably trying to get out the locked escape hatch. They’re gonna be pissed when they realize the hatch won’t open and they’re trapped. And it won’t be long before we have wet, pissed vamps, fresh outta the shower and wanting revenge. On three, people.”
In the moments we had been standing there, Eli had used the last of his C4 on the third door. He didn’t bother to count silently, and I drew a silver stake and my fourteen-inch-long vamp-killer as he counted down. “One, two, three.”
The door blew. And nothing happened. No vamps flew at us. Nothing happened. At all.
I raced past Eli and Bruiser, passing through the baptismal water, feeling it splatter on my hair and across my neck and back. Leaped through the splintered door, into the room. Landed, weapons out to either side, my body bladed, left foot forward, balanced. Ready for anything. I stopped. Water swirled into the room and around my feet.
Clustered in the back of the room were six vamps. Big H was in the middle, standing with his arms out at the sides, his fingers seeming to claw at the wall. Two vamps were on either side; one was crouched at his feet. All of them were vamped out, snarling, their bodies oddly twisted, but not like the spidey vamps. Like regular old vamps. None of them moved.
And I had no idea what to do.
I just stood there. Weapons ready. Breathing like a bellows. Inside me, Beast snarled, puzzled. Behind me, Eli turned off the water. Silence fell.
The guys moved into the room, forming a semicircle behind me.
Like the upstairs, this suite was done in white and scarlet, with a bed big enough to play touch football on, white-painted columns for bedposts, a seating area big enough to seat both teams on, tables and chairs at one end of the room, an en suite bath visible through an open door. And a pile of vamps so still they looked like statuary.
Hieronymus took a faint breath and said something I couldn’t hear. I pulled off my helmet and he repeated, “I cannot.”
I stepped closer, feeling the guys behind me keeping pace. “What can’t you do?”
His face warped, as if his skin had been pulled to the side only to resettle like soft clay or putty that, left alone, returned to its original form. Something was hinky here, not what I had expected, not even subconsciously.
I took another step and sniffed, my mouth open to take in the scent of the room, which I hadn’t done since I started down the stairs to Big H’s lair. The smell of vamp was strong and herbal: the floral of funeral flowers, the dry scent of sage. But the smell of sickness was missing, as was the acrid, dusty scent of the spidey vamps.
I walked slowly toward them, the guys on my trail, spreading out and around furniture, keeping the vamps covered. I was close enough that in Beast’s vision, I could see the necklace around Big H’s neck. And I realized that his neck was burned beneath it. It hadn’t been that way before; I was sure of that.
To the female vamp at his feet, I said, “Unbutton H’s shirt.”
An expression of utter relief crossed her face and vanished. She stood gracefully, reaching long, delicate fingers to her master. They unbuttoned Big H’s white shirt, exposing his chest. Which was blistered and pitted and blackened around a shard of iron wrapped in corroded, ancient copper.
“Tag. You’re it,” I said. When the vamps didn’t react, I said, “The Naturaleza tagged you. They put that on you sometime after you hired me to come kill them off and before I got here. It’s controlling you. Isn’t it?”
The female vamp nodded once, then froze.
“If I take it off, will you die?”
Hieronymus’ face twisted again, and I realized it was with the effort to speak. Nothing came out, but his lips moved. He said, “Take it.”
Keeping the vamp-killer to the side, I sheathed the stake, dropped the helmet, and reached up a hand. I touched the copper necklace. Lifted it slowly. The iron wrapped in copper tore H’s skin as I lifted it away. Blood trickled down his chest. There was no clasp, and I wasn’t going to get close enough to lift it over his head. “This is gonna hurt,” I said.
With a single massive jerk, I broke the chain and leaped back.
The vamps collapsed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. The iron swung on the chain, back and forth, dangling in my fist. Power surged up from it, snaring me in its might. The entire room went black.
And I was falling.
CHAPTER 26
Mr. Prepared for Anything
