'I can tell you about the six old ones, and their leader. They are on your country's soil now.'
'And what about the Cursed One?' I ordered.
The four wights shrieked in chorus. Darne cringed.
'How do you know of Lord Machado?' The vampire hissed the name.
'Me and him are old pals. Now if you want the girl, I want to know what he's here for.'
'Very well then. But it is your doom. Lord Machado has the artifact. He will take it to a Place of Power and he will use it. You cannot stop him. No mortal can stop him.'
'Look, Jean, I don't want to stop him. I just want to make sure I end up on the winning team. Know what I mean?'
The vampire smiled. 'I can help you then. You do not want to be on the wrong side when Lord Machado rules. Do we have a deal?'
Julie interrupted angrily. 'Owen? What the hell are you thinking? No deals with vampires; he'll kill me as soon as you walk out the door.'
'Shut up, bitch!' I snarled. I move very fast for a big man. In the next second, I dropped my shotgun, letting the sling catch it. I lifted my right hand as if I was going to backhand her. Julie's eyes widened in shocked surprise. The vampire's eyes followed my uplifted hand, as my left hand lifted a grenade off of my webbing. I brought my hands together smoothly. Instead of throwing my fist, I stuck my finger through the safety pin and pulled. The sound of the pin landing on the steaming floor was exceedingly loud.
'Run, Julie. Run now.' I held the live grenade up next to my face. The only thing keeping the grenade from exploding was the thin spring-loaded metal spoon that I was holding down with one finger. If I relaxed my grip the fuse would ignite. Five seconds later it would explode, and possibly ignite the engine room in a massive explosion. Julie did not say anything. She nodded and then retreated. The rest of the team followed quickly. I shouted one final instruction: 'Get ready to abandon ship!'
'You idiot!' the vampire roared. The wights hissed and thrashed in unison. 'You will destroy us all!'
'Better my way than yours, you snail-eating bastard.' I started slowly backing away. The wights exploded from the room and spread out in a skirmish line, snapping and clawing at the air. Jean Darne stepped through the portal and strode forward. In the residual steam and in the red emergency lights he looked like the traditional versions of the devil. So this must be hell.
'Give me the grenade,' he ordered. Darne locked his eyes on mine. Shivers ran down my spine, though the room temperature was running around a hundred and thirty degrees.
'Oh, I'll give it to you all right.'
'I compel you. Hand me the grenade, safely.' The red eyes bored into mine. The words repeated themselves in my conscious mind, and burrowed into my subconscious like tendrils. I felt myself starting to comply. The wights began to inch closer. My vision began to darken.
'NO!' I shouted, shaking my head wildly. The wights shrank back.
'You have a strong will, ape man, but it won't do you any good. Give me that grenade. You do not want to die.'
'Neither do you! Stay back!' I waved the grenade in front of me. A pound of high explosives was my holy symbol.
'Maybe I should just take it. I am greater than you can understand. The greater the creator, the greater the creation. My creator was the greatest of them all.' Darne's devil visage continued to advance.
'If you think you're fast enough, come and get it.' I backed into something solid, the escape ladder leading to the cargo bay, forty feet of iron rungs standing in the middle of the crowded room between me and safety. I knew that Darne would never let me make it to the corridor.
'You are not leaving me with any choice, human,' the vampire hissed. He stopped, less than ten feet away. His wights stopped alongside of him, two on each side. There was about a yard between each of the creatures. An image of black steel plates popped unbidden into my mind.
It had to be fate.
I kept my left arm extended with the grenade. I reached down with my right and grasped the stock of my shotgun. I had fired this gun hundreds and thousands of times, practiced until my fingers had bled and my shoulder formed thick recoil calluses. My father, the ruthless perfectionist, had driven me hard when it came to shooting, because he sensed that I had a gift and would not settle for anything less than perfection in his sons. The wood was worn smooth under my glove. The Remington glistened darkly with moisture from the steam. I brought the butt into contact with my shoulder. My life came down to this instant. I needed to beat my record.
'Catch!' I tossed the grenade to Darne. The spoon released with a metallic sproing, igniting the fuse. The vampire moved as a blur to snatch the grenade out of the air. The wights mindlessly tracked the moving object. For me, time ceased. The gun and I were one seamless melding of man and machine. The safety was released as my finger knowingly sought the trigger. The muzzle rose perfectly. The trigger was pulled. The sear released. The hammer fell. The firing pin struck the primer. The powder burned.
I was bringing the muzzle onto the second wight's head before the buckshot struck the first. Fire. Work the action. Repeat. Five shots. Faster than I had ever gone before. The fusillade was a continuous roar without pause. I did not miss any of the five undead craniums.
Dropping the shotgun onto its sling, I grabbed the ladder and started to climb as fast as I humanly could. I did not wait to watch for results. I heard thuds as some of the wights fell to their backs, or collapsed to their knees.
Darne had been a Monster Hunter for longer than I had been alive. He knew what to do with live ordnance in a bad place. He had caught, and then immediately launched the grenade with a pitch that would have made any major league pitcher proud, right through the doorway and into the corridor. He did that even as my silver buckshot pellets penetrated his skull.
The grenade hit the corridor wall and rolled away, now belching orange signal smoke. It was a harmless smoke grenade.
Darne screamed as the silver burned him. 'Kill him! KILL HIM!'
Two of the wights shrugged off their shattered skulls and damaged brain tissues, leapt to their feet and charged. The first began to climb after me as the second jumped onto one of the engines and began to climb up the metal surface like a spider. One wight had its eyes put out and stumbled blindly for the ladder, searching for me by smell. The last had its spinal cord severed and was flopping wildly as random impulses fired from its undead brain. I climbed as fast as I could, legs pumping, arms grasping and pulling with all of the desperate strength I could muster. The wights were far faster.
I was halfway up the ladder when the first wight clawed at my boot. Grabbing the shotgun, I fired a single round straight down between my feet. The creature's hand exploded on impact and it fell toward the ground. The blind wight quickly took its place, scurrying after me. The wall crawler matched my pace, and launched itself at the ladder. There was barely time to swing around to the other side as it crashed into the slick steel bars. I dangled over the floor as it wildly tore at me. One paralyzing touch and I was dead. I swung the shotgun like a club, smashing the wight in the face. It tore my weapon away, ripping through the sling as it fell to the deck. I slipped on a wet rung, and then forced myself to start climbing again.
Darne caught my Remington in one hand. He expertly pumped the weapon, aimed it at me and fired. The buckshot slammed into my armored chest, knocking me back. I grunted in pain, but the silver pellets stopped against the woven Kevlar. My gloves slipped on the wet steel, and I toppled backwards in flailing panic. My knee wrenched painfully as I crashed upside-down into the ladder. I hung suspended, my boot wedged under one rung, and my knee bent over the top of another, like an insane trapeze artist. The blood rushed to my head, and I watched as Darne pumped the shotgun, aimed it right between my eyes and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. The click was the loudest sound in the world. That had been my seven shots.
The blind wight surged upwards, sensing my warm blood. Still facing down, I swung my fist and shattered its undead face. The creature was knocked aside and fell. Instantly my hand went numb, and coldness rippled up my arm. I grunted as I did an upside-down sit-up, grabbed the rung above me with my left hand, and pulled. My right arm hanging limply and my knee throbbing in pain, I kept pulling myself along; push up one rung, lean in, reach up for the next one, repeat. My shotgun shattered as it ricocheted spectacularly off of the rail next to my head. Darne had a good arm.
'That was my favorite gun!' I bellowed as I kept inching nearer to the hatch. I now had a wight on the ladder
