Fat Vampire Value Meal (Books 1-4 in the series) (51 page)

Reginald focused, and everything stopped. He could see Nikki’s knuckles emerging from the Guard’s back, but what was spraying out wasn’t blood. It was grayer, and there were sparks. Then Reginald remembered that Nikki wore an African ring on that hand, which was carved out of polished wood.
 

Reginald made a mental note that another must-have item for the well-equipped vampire soldier of today would be wooden knuckles, not unlike brass knuckles.
 

Maurice’s head had turned, despite the dozens now advancing on him. His brows were furrowed. The expression on his face was one of curiosity, as if he’d heard a noise he couldn’t explain.
 

Maurice, pick me up.

Although Reginald was the brain, he was none of the brawn. If he was to participate in this lopsided battle, he’d need to do it as a backpack worn by someone who was much faster than he was.
 

Time resumed. Maurice turned and, without hesitation, came to where Reginald was laying and hoisted him over one shoulder as if he weighed nothing at all. Even at the glacial pace Reginald was allowing, Maurice’s movement was blurred.
 

Jesus, is he fast.
 

Time stopped.
 

Nikki, come with us
, he thought.
 

She turned.

It’s a game of chess — just a very big, very complex game of chess,
Reginald thought.
Assess the pieces. Anticipate the moves of hundreds of simultaneous opponents twenty steps in advance. Win, or die.

They began to make their way down the front stairway. It was tempting to tell Maurice to jump to the arena floor, but the pauses and slow-downs were an illusion that existed solely within Reginald’s mind. Nothing was actually stopping or slowing, and the same laws as ever applied in real time. One of those laws said that vampires were much faster than gravity. In the time it would take for them to fall through the air and land, they could have twenty Guards on them.
 

The process required tremendous concentration and was incredibly stressful. Reginald couldn’t hear the others because they couldn’t think as fast as he could, so he was on his own to mastermind their fight and hopeful escape. It felt like he was moving pieces around inside of a giant diorama, but he could only go forward, never backward. The relative speeds and strength of all three of them still applied. He had to make guesses and anticipate where others were moving, but if they got backed into a corner, they’d still be backed into a corner — no matter how slowly it happened.
 

Reginald sweated each move. The pause-think-resume-act cycle made it easier to see what to do, but whether opportunities presented themselves or not still depended a lot on luck. The walls could easily still close in, and if they did, it might actually be
more
terrible to watch them close in slowly than it would have been in real time.
 

Ahead of them, two vampires — roughnecks who were not Guard, and who looked like recently turned members of a biker gang, were crouched in their way. Reginald had been watching them. In a second, they’d spring forward, launching themselves in the air at Maurice and Nikki’s necks. Evading them was as simple. Reginald told Maurice to drop him, then to grab him by the leg and drag him. He told both Maurice and Nikki to go onto their hands and knees and scamper forward, staying low. By the time the pair jumped, Maurice and Nikki were already on the floor, moving underneath them with Reginald in tow. The vampires soared harmlessly above them. Reginald had time to notice paired looks of perplexity on their faces. Then Maurice hoisted Reginald onto his back and resumed running.
 

They dodged. They evaded. Heads were pulled off. As long as they could keep space around them, they’d be okay. A halo of three feet was enough to maneuver as long as no more than two or three vampires were ever inside of it. Maurice was fast enough to outrun any claw or fang, and even Nikki, who was millennia younger, had been born with enough prowess to punch through two attackers in the time it would take one to strike her, as long as she knew exactly where to strike, how to strike, and when.
 

Reginald steered them through tangles of arms and bodies, propelled them over scrums, turned them into precision weapons.
 

Then Reginald remembered Maurice’s sword. He wore it all the time unless it was taken from him, and the Guard hadn’t taken it today because the Guard had deserted their posts.
 

Maurice unsheathed his weapon.

Choke up on it
, thought Reginald.
 

There wasn’t enough room in the crowd to swing a sword without getting tangled and losing time to the momentum of big swings, so Maurice grabbed the sword in its middle, his hand immediately cutting and bleeding crimson against its razor edge. He gripped it tightly, the blade stopping and anchoring once it became wedged in bone. Then he started to swing it with one hand like a double-ended axe, slicing and swiping with both ends.
 

The handle on one end of the sword was unwieldy, so Maurice broke it off as simply as snapping a twig. Then, even in a life-and-death situation, even while they were outnumbered by more than a hundred to each of their one, Reginald had to laugh inside of his head as he watched Maurice swing with one hand while using the other to stow the handle of the sword in his pants pocket, so that he could have it fixed later if they survived.
 

It would normally have been impossible for Maurice, even as fast as he was, to deliver perfect neck shots with each swipe of the sword, but Reginald guided him through each swing, having him adjust higher or lower, far end up or far end down, even once he’d begun to strike. Each time a head came off, gravity took over. Because gravity was the slowest force in the room, they had to dodge what looked like stationary, floating heads as they cut through the crowd. Reginald decided that clearing heads was something he could handle, even as slow as he was. So from atop Maurice’s shoulders, he began using his own glacial hands to slap them away as they began to flake into dust. As he did, Reginald made a mental note to watch the video of this if they made it out alive. In real time, what they were doing had to look like vegetables being fed into a food processor.
 

There was a knot of vampires in front of them. Too many to cut through. They were too dense, without sufficient room to cut or strike or evade. Reginald’s mind looked to the left. A gap was closing. He looked to the right, which opened into the Council room. That way was clear, but it would be a dead end, and in the opposite direction from the exit. They couldn’t go inside the room unless they wanted to make a last stand using the door as a bottleneck. Reginald did a quick mental calculation. There were still too many of them left. Their chances of killing all of the vampires that remained, even in a bottleneck, were nil. And what was more, Reginald’s mind was getting tired. He willed himself into focus, but he couldn’t sustain this level of concentration for much longer.
 

He told Maurice and Nikki to turn left, skirting the crowd. They did. He looked right and saw the wall of vampires. He looked left, now back toward the stands and the Deacon’s box, and saw scores cascading down from the seats and rafters. They’d been running for three to five seconds in real time — plenty long enough for everyone to catch on, and plenty long enough for all of those interested in fighting to fight.
 

The gaps in front of them were beginning to close.
 

Reginald’s mind looked backward, wondering if the open door to the Council room was the wisest choice after all. But even now, it might be too late.
 

A young-looking vampire came in from the right, his hands up and reaching for Reginald, his fangs out. In the same moment, a female vampire was crouched on the floor in front of them. A third had its hands two feet from Nikki.
 

He told Maurice to strike the closest vampire and told Nikki exactly where and how to disarm the crouching one with a kick. Time rolled forward. All three vampires advanced. The leaping one leapt. Nikki struck it below the chin hard enough to open a stress wound in its neck. Maurice took out the one on his right with his blade. The third advanced a foot, its fingers now very near Nikki’s neck.
 

Nikki, turn to your left!
thought Reginald.
Strike with your left hand!

But her left hand was at her side, and would never make it in time. He changed his order.
 

Duck!

Time inched forward. The clawed hands came closer. Maurice, having finished his kill, turned. The one Nikki had kicked now had a red line at its neck, its head snapped far enough to touch its head to its back. It’s body was arched in the air, starting to flip.
 

Reginald told Maurice what to do, but Maurice’s hands and blade were still to his right.
 

Reginald thought. All he could do was to wait and see if Maurice could make it, or if Nikki could duck in time.
 

He inched time forward.
 

Nikki ducked a few inches, but the vampire was descending on her, and its attack arc followed her ducking motion. Maurice was fast, but not fast enough — and thanks to Nikki and her attacker’s downward motion, he would strike too high if he got there in time to strike at all.
 

Reginald told Nikki to turn away. He tried to kick at the attacker himself.
 

Time inched forward. The hands touched Nikki’s neck. From where Reginald was atop Maurice’s shoulders, he could do nothing but watch helplessly.
 

Everything stopped.
 

Nikki was going to die. There was nothing he could do. Nothing Nikki could do. Nothing Maurice could do.
 

A small opening had begun to form in front of them, and beyond the opening was the door to the exit. If Maurice’s next move took him forward, he might be able to make it through. But that would mean leaving Nikki behind.

In timelessness, Reginald looked at Nikki. He pondered. He calculated. He prayed.
 

There was nothing he could do.
 

It took him a long, long time to reach the inescapable conclusion that either she would die alone or they would all die together. So with great, great, sorrowful reluctance, he commanded Maurice to move toward the exit.
 

But when time rolled forward again, something massive struck Nikki’s attacker from the rear and the encroaching vampire flew away, fast and hard enough even in slow-time to strike the far wall and break into pieces like a ceramic doll. Reginald couldn’t bring himself to stop; he allowed his awareness to inch forward so that he could watch it happen.
 

The massive thing coming up from behind was Brian Nickerson, who was making a berserker run from the Council chamber toward the door.
 

Reginald had always imagined that Brian must be incredibly powerful given his six-foot-seven, three-hundred-plus pound body made of pure muscle, and he wasn’t disappointed. Vampirism had magnified Brian’s already-Herculean strength and the surprising speed and agility he’d spent hours each day honing. Brian moved like a wide receiver and cleared bodies like a lineman. He was cutting through the crowd like a train, his head down, his powerful arms tossing bodies aside as if they were tufts of dust. Nothing could stand in his way.
 

Brian was shameless in his self-preservation. As he stormed forward, Reginald could see that he was holding one of his Council rivals in front of him. His makeshift shield was slashed, cut, bitten, ripped. And when that vampire was mostly spent, Brian started to use him as a club, swinging him around with one hand while he used the other to throw bodies aside.
 

Reginald didn’t waste any time. He directed Nikki and Maurice into Brian’s wake, before it closed again with teeth and claws.
 

Once they were in the corridor, things became easy. Reginald unclenched his tired mental muscles and began watching as things happened in real time. They went up the stairs and through the unguarded lobby. In the blur of a second, they were at the front door. He’d already lost track of Brian, who hadn’t so much as looked back. Reginald did look back, slowing time in his mind to do so. The others were coming up from the basement, pouring through the stairwell door and into the Asbury’s main room like ocean water rushing through the hull of a sinking ship.

Underneath Reginald, Maurice had stopped. His toe tapped nervously. Nikki was beside them, all three fleeing vampires standing on four feet just past the front door, at the apron of tile in the club’s front lobby.
 

The sun had risen.
 

It was still low in the sky, casting long shadows across High Street, but the campus buildings to the east side of the road were low, and the shadows wouldn’t make for sufficient cover. Sunlight streamed halfway into the Asbury’s lobby like a welcome mat made of death. Brian must have run right out into it. If he could find shelter nearby, he might be fine because he was still young. Reginald and Nikki, in theory, could do the same. It would hurt like hell and they wouldn’t be able to see where they were going after a while because they’d be blind, but they could do it. Reginald had accidentally fried himself when he was first turned. It had hurt, but a short bout in the sun wouldn’t kill a young vampire if he could find shelter quickly and heal.
 

Maurice, on the other hand, would turn to ash inside of a second.

The vampires from the basement were almost on them. It was a choice between the fat and the fire.
 

“Nikki,” said Reginald. “Take my arms.”
 

She looked down, confused. Reginald had stepped off of Maurice’s back and now stood behind him, one hand around each of Maurice’s sides, under his armpits. Maurice was short, so Reginald had to crouch to get under his armpits at all.