Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood (5 page)

Chapter 6

My former building still loomed in the shadows behind us, less than three blocks away. A few lights were lit in nearby windows, but for the most part the neighborhood was still. A few blocks behind us lurked a van with the same designer as ours, its headlights glaring with a predatory leer. Its sliding door stood open, but it was too dark to make out who or what was inside. Slowly, though, four humanoid figures loped out, unfurling themselves with an eerily feline grace. We were still too far away to make out the expressions on their face, but it was clear from the leonine way they watched: They were hunting us.

They stood unnaturally still. Their eyes never left us, even for a moment. May was right: these things were vampires.

I hadn’t seen a vamp since the Battle of Guyana, when May and a hundred other knights had pulled Bill Foster and me out of the hole in the ground, killing the things left and right. Mostly, though, I remembered the three months that had come before that, when I’d been tortured. The scars on my neck and wrists prickled.

The back, passenger-side tire of our van was flat.

“They’ve been tailing us since we left the safe house,” May said. “Pulled over right before we hit the pothole. It’s like they knew it was there.”

A vampire hit squad, if that’s what this was, would have scouted out the routes we’d take to get from the safe house to the headquarters. Probably, the vamps did know that the pothole was there, and that was why they’d chosen this spot to make their attack. We could get away on three tires, but it would slow us down.

“Think we could hoof it?” I asked.

“They’d catch us.”

“I guess that just leaves the one option.”

“Mmm.” May lifted her sword.

I drew mine and spun around to face the vampires. The steel slid out of the leather as easily and silently as if it had been polished every day for the last year. The power of the sword really flowed through my body now that the blade was free. It energized every muscle, every fiber, every atom in my body turning the knobs all the way to eleven. Any residual fear was...not gone, exactly, but shrunken. Like a shadow at high noon, the fear was tiny and inconsequential. There was nothing to be afraid of. I had my sword.

I looked into the van. “Care to join us, Commander?”

Avalon smirked his same smarter-than-thou smirk. “I expect the two of you captains have matters well in control.” And he reached over and slid the van’s door shut.

“Freakin’ office warriors, man,” I snarled. “Coward.” I looked at May. “Ready?”

“Whenever you are, Captain Carver.”

I found myself grinning.
Captain Carver
. I liked the sound of that. With a wordless cry I lifted the sword above my shoulder and ran towards the vampires.

May outpaced me easily. She’d always been faster than me, but she used to have put a little effort into it—damn, I was out of shape. Her sword was held in front of her like a cavalry commander ordering a charge.

The vampires surged forward, a hiss rumbling from their throats so loudly it was practically an inhuman wave of force.

With her free hand, May pulled from her belt a long, thin piece of wood. She pointed the wand at the lead vampire and muttered something in a dead language. There was a sound like a car hitting a wall of cement, and the vampire was picked off of his feet as if by an invisible bird. He rolled around in the air for a moment before hitting the sidewalk. The second vampire, who was right behind the leader, was taken down like a bowling pin. Both of them lay still.

A third vampire vaulted over his fallen peers. He got a good five feet of air and his fingernails extended into catlike black claws. May ducked under his pounce, letting the vampire land directly in front of me.

This vampire, like all vampires, looked human at first. He was about six feet tall with a blond buzzcut and a respectable business suit. Like most vamps, he was good looking, which was one of their best weapons. While they’re stronger and faster than humans and they can take their prey by force, vampires typically use ambush tactics. By looking like an attractive guy or girl they can get close to their prey until their ready to strike. It lets them be a little more subtle, a little more seductive. In service of that goal, a vampire is almost always going to be attractive.

At least when they want to be. But ask any TV makeup artist: It takes a lot of effort to take an ugly person and make them pretty. Especially when you’re dealing with supernatural levels of ugly.

As I watched the vampire’s face seemed to melt away. His features blurred and distended. His skin turned papery and gray so that it hung off of his body like another set of clothes. He snarled, wolflike, revealing a mouthful of long, dagger-like teeth. But what really drew the attention was the way his eyes darkened until they were totally, completely black.

Like I said: not so hot.

The corpselike thing swung his claws at me, but I was ready. I jumped back, letting him sail pass harmlessly. He overcommitted, putting too much into the attack, and for just a second he was off-balance. It was long enough. I swung the sword, my arm vibrating with the energy, and took his head off at the shoulder. The vampire’s body wavered on its feet for a moment, before it dropped boneless-like to the ground.

May was grappling with the fourth vampire. A thick, clear liquid bubbled at the ends of his fangs. I closed in to help, but the vamp that May had put down like a bowling ball was back on his feet and in the fight. He hit me with massive force, his clawed hand closing around my neck.

We hit the ground in a flurry of oxygen-starved grunts (from me) and animalistic snarls (from him). The sword dropped from my hand. I managed to get an arm in between me and the vampire, so the enchanted leather took most of the damage. The female vampire appeared above me, too. Her eyes shone in the darkness and, while her companion kept me pinned to the ground, she descended with her fanged jaws hanging open.

Suddenly, like a demented elephant, the horn of the van started beeping. The two vampires looked over their shoulders to see what the commotion was about. Krissy sat in the driver’s seat, hammering at the steering wheel like she was trying to drive a nail into the horn. I slid my hand beneath the vampire’s claws and, with a grunt of effort, pushed him off of me.

The sword was back in my hand before I was fully on my feet. With my left hand I shoved the vampire. They may have greater-than-human strength, but that doesn’t mean they get to ignore Mr. Newton. When I acted he reacted. The vampire stumbled backwards.

I brought the sword down in a downward arc that opened the vampire’s belly like a fish. Gray, dry, cordlike entrails tumbled out of his abdomen. He blinked for a moment, staring down at his opened stomach. With another swing I took off his head. The vampire dropped like a stringless marionette. On my follow-through I spun and brought the blade towards the female vampire. She leaped straight up, just in time to avoid decapitation. Instead, the sword sheared through her legs, just below the knees. She landed in a clumsy heap.

There was a sound like an explosion. The vampire that May had been fighting was thrown into the air like he’d been launched from a trebuchet. He tumbled tail over teakettle into the air and hit the ground in the middle of the street, hard enough to crack the pavement.

May dusted off the front of her shirt as she stalked towards the downed vampire. He squirmed, trying to rise, but May speared him through the shoulder with her sword. He howled in pain, but he lay still.

The female vamp lay at my feet, her black eyes grayed with pain. She made weak, pathetic noises like a newborn puppy. I was unimpressed. I left my last shreds of sympathy for the vampires in the Guyanese jungles.

I grabbed the downed vampire by her collar and slammed her—not gently—against the hood of a nearby parked car.

“Why are you trying to kill me?” I said. I scared myself with how calm my voice sounded.

“We’re not,” she said. “We’re really not. He doesn’t want you dead.”

“‘He?’” I growled. “He who? What are you doing here?

Her eyes flicked towards the van. Krissy was still sitting in the driver’s seat. The sliding back door was open, and Avalon hunched down in the shadows, watching the scene with cool disinterest. Otherwise, the female vampire gave no sign that she was going to answer my questions. The vampire on the tip of May’s sword moaned in pain, and my vamp looked over in concern.

Ah
. There was an idea. “May,” I said. “Kill her friend.”

“With pleasure,” May said. She moved the tip of her sword towards the hollow of the vampire’s throat.

“No!” the vampire screamed. “I’ll tell you anything.”

“May, wait.” To the vampire, I said nothing, just gazed down at her, patient as a tiger.

“There’s no time right now,” she said. “The sun will be up soon.”

She was right about that. The first rays of the morning were already lightening the sky. It would be a few minutes before they made their way down to street level, though—enough so I could get some information out of her before we had to drag her into the shadows.

“Then I guess you’d better talk fast,” I said.

“Fine,” she said. “We’re working for Roberto—”

“
AIEEEEEEE
!” The pained scream interrupted my interrogation. The vampire at May’s feet had burst into flames. A stray sunbeam must have taken an unfortunate bounce off of one of the towering building’s windows and hit him.

“No,” the female moaned. “Please no.”

My shadow got a little longer as the sun climbed higher into the sky. The light hit the female vampire. Her skin brightened for a moment, like a lobster in a boiling pot. Then it blackened like a steak in a fire. I hopped back, narrowly avoiding the flames that licked the vampire’s skin.

The vampire screamed as she died.

Fortunately for her it only took a few seconds. When it was done all that remained was a pile of gray ash. The other three vamps ended up the same way. Sunlight has that effect on vampires. Even ones that are already dead. One stiff wind, and there’d be no sign that four undead soldiers had ever laid on this street.

The sun was up on my first day as a captain. I was off to a stellar start.

May and I made our way back to the van. No one said anything. May and I got to work changing the tire. Krissy kept looking from me to May, something like terror in her eyes. I rolled my shoulders and let her stare. This was what she’d gotten herself into. Better if she saw it for what it really was now.

As I sat down, the tire changed, Avalon looked at me with something like... satisfaction. “Welcome back to the Knights of the Round Table, Captain Carver.”

I snorted and leaned my head against the cool metal of the van’s door. Captain Carver. It really did have a nice ring to it.

Now if I only had any idea who this Roberto was, and why he was trying to kill me, I’d be off to a really great start.

Chapter 7

The sun was fully up by the time May drove the van out of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. Another day was beginning in New York City. The streets were already beginning to clog with the beeping, stinking, polluting traffic. God, I loved that town. From there it was a short drive to Long Island City.

May turned a corner onto a small, unobtrusive block, and it was like she’d turned back the clock. As we cruised along, the streets were quiet and nearly empty. A lone bus rumbled at the end of the block, turned right, and was gone, leaving us as the only moving vehicle in motion. No one said anything as May pulled into a little parking lot. Morning was in full swing, but there were no people in sight. Unusual for anywhere in New York. I wondered if the Table had chosen this neighborhood for its local headquarters because of the weird quiet, or if the solitude was a side effect of exposure to my network of sword-swingers. Probably a little of both, I decided.

The building itself didn’t look like much, which of course made it a perfect choice for the offices of a secret society. Squat with a brick exterior, it looked just like its neighbors. Thick, dark curtains covered the windows. There were two other vehicles in the three-car lot: a red Mustang and an old Toyota. The only touch that gave the building any personality was a little sign mounted on the wall next to the door: a cartoon mouse, lying flat on its back with its little legs in the air and Xs for eyes. The caption read “Kill ‘Em Dead Pest Control.”

I snorted. What were the Knights of the Round Table, really, but a bunch of high-end exterminators?

I hopped out of the van with Krissy. Avalon stayed where he was, and May opened her window.

“Aren’t you two coming in?” I asked.

Avalon shook his head slowly, as if it were the dumbest question imaginable. “We have an important meeting to attend in London. Captain Strain will be briefing the Commanders Council on the progress of the war in Eastern Europe.”

I quirked an eyebrow at May, who smiled and looked at the steering wheel.

“Your orders,” Avalon said, “are to investigate the murder of Jack McCreary. You will discover what happened to him. My
recommendation
would be to begin by speaking with the vampire ambassador. As you may know, he had been residing in this city since the war began.”

“Are you crazy? He’s a vampire. He won’t tell me anything.”

“Ambassador Flavian has assured the Pendragon that he harbors no ill will towards us. He is a neutral party in this war and there is no reason that he should refuse his help to you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “No reason at all—except, oh wait, he’s a vampire.”

“Dave.” May’s voice was a quiet warning.

Avalon’s eyes narrowed. “Not all vampires are recalcitrant maniacs, Captain. Flavian and his people wish to see this war end as bloodlessly as possible.”

“He’s a vampire,” I said. “This is a mistake.”

“No, Captain. It is an order.” Avalon leaned out of the van. “And you would do well to remember that I am your commander. Bill Foster may have allowed his subordinates to question his orders, but I am not Bill Foster.”

I held his gaze long enough to let him know he didn’t scare me before stage-whispering, “Sorry, Commander. I’m an American—I guess I get kind of antsy when a Brit tries to tell me what to do.”

In the corner of my eye, Krissy slapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh.

Avalon smirked, but it was a dangerous smile, a snakelike expression. His pearly whites shone as he leaned back into the darkness of the van and slid the door shut.

May looked apologetic. “I’ll be right back here after the briefing. Hopefully by tonight.”

I nodded. “Thanks, May. For...well, you know.”

She smiled, but she looked embarrassed. Without another word, she put the van in gear and pulled out of the parking lot. As her taillights disappeared around a corner, I realized how alone I was. They say it’s lonely at the top, and I was beginning to see just how true that was. Trouble was, I still didn’t know exactly what it was I was going to be on top of.

Krissy put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s cold out here,” she said. “Should we go inside?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Let’s do it.”

I climbed the steps up the short stoop and tried the door. It was locked. “Huh,” I said. “That’s weird.” Since the Table’s primary mission is helping people who find themselves plagued by supernatural problems, we needed to be accessible to the community just in case some lost teenager showed up with a banshee problem or a zookeeper accidentally awakened a Black Dog. We couldn’t do that if the office door was locked. Something was wrong.

I knocked. The door was a heavy, solid piece of oak. Definitely not unbreakable, if it came to that, but it would at the very least slow down an attacker.

It took a few moments—longer than I’d expected—before a gruff voice answered my knock. “Yeah?”

“Uh, hi.” I frowned. This was strange. “I’m Dave Carver. I...I guess I’m your new boss.”

A deadbolt clicked on the other side of the door. It opened a crack, but I could see it was still chained. “Let me see the hardware, please.”

I pulled the medallion from my collar and handed it through the cracked door. Dark-skinned, calloused hands took the little shield from me and disappeared. I waited a few moments before the man apparently decided my badge was legitimate. He opened the door.

There was a tiny entrance hall behind the front door. It was too cramped for all three of us in there, so Krissy instinctively waited on the stoop. There was a flight of stairs going up to the second floor, and an open doorway that seemed to lead to the main office space. Between me and either of those things, though, was a man with a sword.

It was a curved-bladed Arabian scimitar with yellow jewels in the hilt. The man holding it was a year or three younger than me, and he was eyeing me with the wariness of a street fighter sizing up an opponent. His hair was shorn so short it was basically shaved. He was a good two, three inches taller than me, and the muscles in his shoulders and chest stretched out the cotton of his Marine Corps T-shirt.

The man handed me back my badge. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Lieutenant Elmore James. I apologize for the security, but after the last couple of days everybody’s a little jumpy.”

I pinned my badge back to my collar and shook the man’s hand. “No worries, Lieutenant. Dangerous times and all that. And you can call me Dave.”

The big man looked worried. Not surprising, considering the state of affairs in the world. Most of the fighting in the Third Vampire War, as they were already calling this conflict, had been contained to South America and Eastern Europe, but Jack McCreary had been killed in his own city. All bets were off. No wonder even the monster hunters were locking their doors.

He nodded, a hair more relaxed. “Dave. I’m Earl.”

“Is the whole office here?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” Earl said. “After what happened to Captain McCreary...”

“Stick together. Got it.”

Earl James led us into the office. It didn’t look like the headquarters of an elite monster killing organization. It looked like a paper company. The carpet was a dull gray and the walls were off-white. Most of the floor was divided into cubicles, but only two of them were currently occupied. A man and a woman each sat at desks, both of them looked to be in their late forties or early fifties and scribbled at some kind of paperwork, pretending not to stare at me.

A pretty young thing sat at a desk near the door. She looked up and smiled nervously, pushing bubblegum pink hair away from horn-rimmed eyes.

“This is Madison Coburn,” Earl said. “The office secretary.”

“
Receptionist
, Earl,” Madison said. “And that’s not all I do. Sometimes I think I’m the only person in this office who can read.”

“That’s true,” Earl said. “Madison's a killer researcher. She’s the one that knew your badge was legitimate. We couldn’t do what we do without her.

“Over there,” he continued, “are Knights Rob Haney and Kim Larsen.”

The latter name was familiar to me, and I couldn’t place why. She’d put no effort into hiding the gray in her hair, which gave her a bearing of aging with dignity. Her face was just starting to show wrinkles. I subtracted the gray hair and about ten years, and I knew how I knew her.

“Kim,” I said, “you may not remember this, but—”

“But we’ve met before?” Her voice was warm and soothing, like a cup of tea. “Bill Foster brought you in here when you were a dirty, seventeen-year-old street kid with nothing to live for. I remember, Captain.”

“You brought me a cup of coffee.” The day I met Bill had been a dark one in my life. That hot drink had been the one good thing to happen to me in what had seemed like a long time.

“I always expected to see you again,” Kim Larsen said. “Congratulations.”

I nodded my thanks, feeling like a shipwreck survivor who’s just found a life raft.

The other knight, Rob Haney, gave me a nod, a conspiratorial gesture, but he didn’t look impressed with me. I figured I knew why not. Jack McCreary was the legend of the Knights of the Round Table. He’d been fighting supes for close to a decade by the time I was born. He was in the same weight class as Bill Foster, and I knew how I’d have felt if some punk kid had tried to fill Bill’s boots.

I took a deep breath and said, “I’m not Jack McCreary. I only met him once, when I first got back to New York six months ago, but that was enough to tell me that he was a great knight. I’ve heard of him, of course: he was an amazing, powerful warrior, and you all should feel honored to have worked with him. There are entire generations of people who are alive today because of his efforts. He was a hero.

“I can’t help that I’m young. But I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure that I live up to his example of what a knight of the Round Table should be.”

No one applauded or anything. I guess I’d expected some claps or something to acknowledge that I understood their position their loss. I wanted them to know that I respected their fallen leader.

Rob Haney nodded again, this time more respectfully.

“Okay,” I said. “So let’s find out who killed him. I’ve been advised we should start with the vampire ambassador. Anybody know where he’s holed up?”

Rob raised his hand. “I’ve met with him a few times.”

“Okay, Knight Haney,” I said. “Grab your sword. We’re gonna go interview a vampire.”