Two hours later, Nick and I huddled in the shadows of the main entrance to the Kingsbridge Armory. We had scaled the chain-link fence without any problem, and now stood in the portico between the two guard towers. At least, they would have been guard towers if this had really been a medieval castle. There also would have been a drawbridge and a moat. Instead, concrete stairs led up to a large wooden door secured with huge chains and an enormous padlock.
The black ski mask over my face was hot and made it difficult to breathe. My hands were sweating, too, but I couldn’t wipe them off because they were encased in latex gloves.
“Here,” Nick had said in the van as he handed the gloves to me. “Wear these.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Fingerprints. Dead vampire bodies look just like dead human bodies. If the police find them, we don’t want to leave behind any extra evidence. The last thing you want is to become a murder suspect.”
“Great. What about hair, fibers, all that stuff? I’ve seen CSI on television. I know what they look for.”
“Our best bet is to hope they don’t find the bodies. They do sometimes, of course. Look, we’re as careful as we can be, and hope for the best. And we’ve got some great lawyers,” he said, flashing a smile at me.
Oh, dear. “Um. Nick?” I said, suddenly remembering what I’d forgotten to tell him in the rush of planning to get inside the armory.
“Yeah?”
“My ex, you know, the vampire?”
“Yes.” He drew the word out.
“He’s still on Pearson’s payroll.”
Nick’s head whipped around toward me. The other guys looked back and forth between us. I held Nick’s eyes with a steady gaze.
Finally Nick nodded. “Tell me about it when we’re through here.”
“Sure,” I said. If we get out alive. I kept that last thought to myself.
We dropped off John and Dominick, now in all-black rap-boy gear, at the far end of the armory, then circled around it once. Nothing seemed out of place, but who was I to know? Tony got out of the van on Kingsbridge Avenue and sauntered away.
Finally, Nick and I found a place to park the van on Jerome. Before we got out and headed back toward the armory, Nick double-checked all our gear. Underneath my light summer jacket I had deposited several stakes, courtesy of Nick.
“Wouldn’t knives be easier to use?” I asked.
“Not if you want to kill vampires,” Nick answered shortly, checking the small crossbow he had strapped under his own jacket. It made him look bulky, but he was a bulky guy anyway, so the additional lumps didn’t look all that odd. His black gym bag was full of arrows.
“The thing about vamps,” he said, “is that you have to kill them with wood to the heart, fire, or decapitation. Nothing else really works. That’s why all our crossbow bolts are primarily wooden. And some of them have been soaked in alcohol to make them more flammable. Flaming wood to the heart is especially effective.”
“So why do I just get stakes?”
“Do you know how to shoot a crossbow?”
“In theory.”
“Theory doesn’t count tonight. You do know how to kill a vampire with a stake. In practice. I saw it. Twice. Anyway, I’m not planning for you to get too close to the action tonight. If Dom’s vamp count was right, the boys and I ought to be able to take them all out without your help.”
“So why take me at all?”
“Because plans don’t always work out, and it never hurts to have another fighter on our side.”
“That’s not very comforting,” I said drily.
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
* * *
We’d been standing in the doorway for about fifteen minutes when Nick suddenly crouched down in the shadows and became utterly still. I followed his lead, straining to see over his shoulder. The lights from the surrounding neighborhood left a glare in my eyes that ruined my night vision, so it took me a few moments to see what had caused Nick to freeze. But when I finally did, my breath caught in my throat.
First one, then two, then three figures dressed all in black flowed across the top of the chain link fence surrounding the armory. I don’t think I would have noticed them if I hadn’t been watching so intently; they seemed to blend into the shadows, to draw the shadows around them in a way that made my eyes want to glide past them. I was reminded of the way Greg had slipped into the shadows behind the door at the law office. I had wondered how the vampires could get into the armory unseen. Now I knew. They just made themselves virtually invisible. Fabulous. Invisibility: another thing in their favor. I tried not to tally up all of the ways in which they had the advantage over us, but a list kept forming in my mind. Invisibility. Strength. Speed. The ability to hypnotize us with their eyes. Big pointy fangs, the better to suck your blood, my dear.
Damn. I needed to pay attention.
I turned my concentration back to the problem at hand. Okay. Three figures so far. All headed across the grass toward us.
Every muscle in my body tensed. I tried to prepare myself to run if the figures made their way toward the main entrance. But when it comes down to it, I don’t think there’s really any way to prepare to run from the vampires headed your way. Slowly I snaked my hand up from its position on the ground, where it held me in a crouch, toward the stake I had slipped through a belt loop.
Just as my fingers touched the top of the stake, the lead vampire stopped and held his hand up to halt the ones behind him. I froze as his head went up into the air, making that same sniffing motion Greg had made in the office.
Arrgh. Smell. I had forgotten to include “keen sense of smell” in my List of Vampiric Advantages.
But whatever the vampire had sensed, it clearly wasn’t us; he moved on after a moment. Of course, moving on meant that he was coming ever closer to us. I waited for Nick to do something, but he remained utterly still and watchful. The three figures moved toward the wall of the armory tower on the far side of the entrance Nick and I hid in.
Then they were gone. I hadn’t seen them go into the building, but they were no longer on the grass. I cast about frantically, hoping to figure out what had happened to them. Nothing. Perhaps they had moved up to the other side of the tower, around to the wall where I couldn’t see them.
After a moment, Nick stood up slowly and motioned for me to follow him. We stepped out of the portico and moved down the steps quickly but quietly. As soon as we could get close to it, Nick slid up against the wall of the tower, hugging it with his body. His movements were almost as fluid as those of the vampires. I followed him, though I wasn’t nearly so graceful about it. Still, I managed to be fairly silent. I think.
As he slid along the wall and around the tower, Nick’s eyes and hands were constantly in motion. He didn’t exactly run his hands along every inch, but he did manage to cover a large portion of it. And then, almost as suddenly as the vampires, Nick was gone. I was only a foot or so behind him, but I had no idea where he’d gone.
Until I stepped up to the point where he’d disappeared. There was a crack between the tower and the wall, a hidden entrance that you had to be right up against to find. It looked like the original crack had been an accident—part of the decaying process of an old building falling into disrepair. But someone had covered it up. It was simple, really. A few pieces of wood placed over the fissure, then plastered and painted to match the surrounding wall, hid the entrance from casual examination. Only if you stood up close to the place where the tower curved around and met the main wall could you tell that the tower itself wasn’t perfectly round; it had a strange lumpiness to it caused by the makeshift entrance.
After only a moment’s hesitation, I followed Nick into the tower. He was standing just far enough inside the entrance to make room for me. After my eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the building, I saw that a short corridor, evidently formed from the same fissure that had cracked the wall, curved away to the right. A faint but steady blue light glowed from around the curve. Nick inched his way forward, again motioning that I should follow him.
I heard a slight scraping from behind me, like a shoe scuffing along the ground. Without thinking, I whirled around and brought up the stake I hadn’t even realized I had in my hand.
Tony stood behind me, leaning back with his hands up in the air in front of him as if to ward off a blow. I froze, then looked up at the stake I had unconsciously pointed directly at his heart. I slowly dropped my hand to my side. Tony smiled at me and gave me a thumbs-up. I almost kill the guy and he approves, I thought. What the hell have I gotten myself mixed up in?
The entire exchange with Tony took only about two seconds, but by the time I turned back around Nick had flattened himself against the wall and was following the curve toward the blue light. I followed his lead, hugging the wall with my back as we peeked around into the room beyond.
One part of my mind noted that we must look like a scene from an old Three Stooges episode, with all of our heads poking around the corner at different levels.
The rest of my mind didn’t think anything at all; it was too busy gibbering in terror.
The room itself was fairly small with high ceilings and small windows. The blue light emanated from a small battery-powered lamp against the far wall.
But the space was full of vampires. I’d known coming in that we were going to fight vampires, so I was expecting it. But I think that anyone who came into the room would have instantly known what they were. Or at least what they weren’t: human. All of the vampires I had seen up to that point had moved more or less like humans. Granted, they’d hissed like animals and done some very un-human things, but they hadn’t looked completely alien.
These things did. I don’t know quite how to describe the movement of preternatural creatures who are built exactly like humans—who used to be humans, in fact. But it’s kind of like what you’d get if you crossed a cat with a snake and made it walk on its hind legs. They slithered upright.
Just looking at them made my skin crawl. I think it was trying to go back the way we had come in, and it was only by sheer force of will that I didn’t follow my skin’s suggestion and get out of there as quickly as possible. These creatures were so patently inhuman that it set off some primal instinct in me, a completely adrenalized “fight or flight” response. I shuddered and pulled back against the wall inside the entryway.
Tony patted my shoulder; I got the feeling that he’d had the same response at some point. It comforted me to be reminded that I wasn’t the only human in the building with all these monsters. I took another stake out from my arsenal and held them two-fisted.
Nick held up his hand behind him, one finger pointed up. Then he raised a second finger, and I realized that he was counting to three. Oh, God. I hadn’t checked to see where all the vampires were. I didn’t know the plan. I couldn’t remember if we had a plan. I couldn’t run out into the middle of all those monsters. I needed more practice!
Then Nick’s third finger went up into the air, and I felt all my muscles tighten and bunch. Before I even had time to think about it, my body had taken me flying out into the room behind Nick, who had starting shooting his crossbow and reloading as quickly as he could. Tony stepped out from behind me and starting shooting as well, and I saw John and Dominick jump down from someplace toward the ceiling.
We took the vampires by surprise. For some reason, I had expected them to be ready for us, maybe because they had all those supernaturally enhanced senses. But I guess even vampires can be lulled into a sense of security. Nick managed to get two of them before they realized something was terribly wrong. Tony and John each got one with a crossbow shot through the heart, but Dom’s shot went wide, thudding into a wall and sticking there.
That was the end of having the element of surprise on our side, though. As soon as they figured out what was going on, the vampires went on the offensive. There were still easily seven or eight of them, and they attacked.
The room filled with those uncanny vampire snarls and hisses, and I looked up just in time to see one jumping down from a windowsill above me. He had his hands out like claws and would have grabbed my neck had I not side-stepped him. As it was, he got his teeth into my shoulder. I felt my jacket rip and two hot points of pain at the top of my left arm.
I was too busy to do anything about it at the moment, though, because another vampire had rushed me when I’d looked up. He, too, aimed at my throat, but I ducked down and came back up under him, slamming my stake into his chest. His eyes got big and he grasped the stake, trying to pull it out as he sank to the floor.
My movement tore the other vampire’s mouth from my arm—and took about half my deltoid with it, if the pain were anything to go by. I spun around to face him and he hissed, my blood flying out of his mouth in a spray of tiny droplets. My left arm felt numb, but I could still move it. I quickly switched the remaining stake to my right hand. The vampire crouched toward the ground and circled around, looking for a weak spot.
I inched backwards, keeping the wall to my back. I didn’t want to get cornered by this guy, but I certainly didn’t want some other vampire sneaking up behind me. The vampire and I watched each other warily.
“You’re going to die, you know,” he said, almost conversationally. I didn’t answer.
“You think you’re tough, but you’re only human. You’re going to die, and I’m going to drink your blood.” His eyes narrowed in pleasure at the thought. “It’ll be hot and salty and will go down smooth.” He drew the last word out in a long, sensuous-sounding syllable.
“You’re disgusting,” I said. He just smiled at me.
I kept moving along the wall, watching for an opportunity to strike. The vampire followed me. We’d made it about a quarter of the way around the room when something over his shoulder caught my eye. Greg stepped out of the shadows of the entrance Nick and Tony and I had used. He winked at me, then blew me a kiss and faded back out of the room.
The vampire facing me took that moment of inattention as his chance to attack. He sprang from his crouch straight at my throat.
“Damn it!” I said. And more in irritation than anything else, I dodged his leap and hit him with the stake. He stumbled, but I didn’t wait to see what happened next. I jumped past him and sprinted toward the exit.
I almost made it, too. But the vampire I had just staked grabbed my bad arm, spinning me back toward him. Apparently, I had missed his heart. Crap.
“I don’t have time for this,” I muttered, reaching up and yanking the stake back out of his chest.
His face contorted in rage as he clutched the gaping wound the stake had left in his chest. He let out a grunt of pain. In retaliation, he grabbed my injured shoulder and squeezed.
The pain sent me almost to my knees and for a moment my head swam.
When the stars had cleared from my eyes, it was as if everything had slowed down. I could almost see my anger flickering around the edges of my vision.
The vampire stood above me victoriously, his eyes completely black and his teeth shining white against the blood drying around his mouth. I leaned my head over as if offering him my neck, and he reared back to strike me with those teeth. At that moment, my right hand came up as if of its own accord, and I felt the wood slide, centimeter by centimeter, under a rib and into a softness at the center of his body.
I swear I could feel his heartbeat reverberating down the wood of the stake and into my hand. It beat once, then twice, then hammered out a tattoo as the vampire recoiled from the weapon that had already killed him.
As his heartbeat faltered to a stop and he crumpled to the ground in front of me, time resumed its normal speed. I had no idea how long the whole thing had taken or if I could even still catch Greg, but I knew I had to try. I stumbled back to my feet and made my way to the hidden entrance. I had to jump over several black-clad bodies along the way. I hoped they were vampires and not our guys, but I didn’t have time to stop and check.
I raced to the end of the small corridor, then squeezed my way out the opening into the night air. Nothing. Greg was gone. Probably long gone. I considered trying to track him, but I had no idea which way he had gone. Besides, I was wearing blood-soaked clothes. And a ski mask. Not something that would necessarily blend in, though I wouldn’t put it past people scurrying down the sidewalk at night in the Bronx to ignore, if not actively avoid, someone who looked like I must have looked at the moment.
Besides, some of my teammates were still back in that room fighting vampires. I couldn’t very well leave them to go chasing after my ex, even if he was one of those vampires who might need killing.
By the time I made it back to the tower room, though, the fighting had ended. Twelve dead vampires lay stretched out on the floor. Tony and Dom were systematically going around the room driving stakes into every vampiric heart. Nick and John were nowhere to be found.
“Just making sure they’re really dead,” Dom said, looking up at me as I walked back into the room.
“Want some help?” I asked.
“Sure. Grab a stake and a vamp and set to. But first get that shoulder tended to.” He jerked his head toward Tony, who had a small medical kit open in front of him.
“Where have you been?” Tony asked me as he poured some sort of anti-bacterial stuff over my shoulder.
“Chasing the one that got away.” I winced as the liquid bubbled up in the wound.
“Any luck?”
“Nope. He really did get away. Where are the others?”
“Scouting out the rest of the place to make sure we haven’t missed anyone.” He spread some clear goop on my shoulder and taped a large sterile pad over it.
“That’s not as bad as it looks. Or as bad as it probably feels. Keep it clean, change the bandage every day, and keep putting this on it,” he said as he handed me a tube of antibiotic ointment.
“You fixed up?” Dom asked. “Good. Here’s a stake. We haven’t done the three on that side of the room yet.”
Just as we were finishing our post-staking staking job, Nick and John came back in through an interior door that I hadn’t really noticed before.
“All done?” Nick asked.
“Yes, sir,” replied Tony. “What do you want us to do with the bodies?”
Nick handed him a gun. I don’t know much about guns, but this one looked big and mean with an extraordinarily long muzzle.
“Put bullets through all the stake holes; that ought to confuse the issue if there’s ever an autopsy. We’re going to have to hide the bodies on site. I don’t want to risk taking them to the van,” Nick said.
“Do you think anyone will hear the gunshots?” I asked worriedly.
“That’s a silencer on that piece.”
Tony proved Nick’s point by shooting the first of the vampire’s bodies. The gun made a muffled whump sound and the bullet thwacked into the body with a sickening thump.
“Let’s start moving these vamps,” said Nick, grabbing the body underneath the arms. John took the feet and they moved out of the room through the same door they’d used moments before. I followed them.
The inner room of the armory was enormous; I could believe it used to hold that racetrack Nick had mentioned. We crossed it and moved through a set of doors into what was clearly the flooded auditorium I had read about online.
“Oh,” I said, “this place reeks.” I covered my nose with my hand.
John and Nick swung the body a few times, then heaved it into the murky water where it slowly sank.
“It’ll cover the smell of the rotting bodies,” Nick said.
“Ugh. I think I’ll stay behind to help Tony,” I said as we headed back to the tower room.
“Good,” said John. “That means you can help with the rest of clean-up. I can’t even begin to tell you how tired I am of bleaching floors.”
After the smell of the fetid water, bleach sounded just fine to me.