Shattered (43 page)

There
were a couple of flickers where people momentarily took on more
solidity and a fraction of a second where everyone else but me
disappeared from my view entirely as I faded back into sight, but
Heath did a pretty good job. It wasn't possible to shoot a gun inside
of an enclosed space without everyone and their dog knowing that a
gun has gone off, so I was the last one into the building, by which
time Heath must have moved deeper into the hall because I could only
see Dom and a couple of wolves in front of me.

Taggart
and Isaac had done their job well. There were two dead or dying
vampires just past the door and I'd never even heard the bodies fall.
I almost stopped to make sure the vampires were dead. It seemed like
the thing to do since I was the last person in the group, but I
couldn't quite bring myself to pick up one of their fallen swords and
start hacking away at them.

I
told myself that Isaac and Taggart wouldn't have made the mistake of
giving an enemy anything other than a mortal wound and I sprinted as
hard as I could after everyone else, but I still couldn't keep up.

Somewhere
along the line I'd unholstered my gun, but I kept my finger off of
the trigger as I all but stumbled into the first of the large, open
spaces that made up the bulk of the interior square footage of the
building. There was another dead vampire just past where the hall
ended, and I could see a few more scattered throughout the massive
room, but as reassuring as that was, it didn't even hold a candle to
the relief that washed over me as I got far enough into the room for
Heath to be able to see me again.

Ghostly
figures popped into view and I could just make out Taggart and Isaac
disappearing through a pair of large double doors off on the far
wall. I was already breathing hard and I made a note to spend more
time in the small exercise room back in the bunker as I continued
across the room.

I
was actually surprised that I was able to pick Isaac and Taggart
out—apparently the building really was abandoned rather than it
just being a front. The fact that there wasn't any electricity was a
pretty good sign that this wasn't somewhere that this particular
group of vampires normally operated. There was a little natural light
coming in through a couple of small skylights, but between the near
darkness and just how insubstantial everyone looked, I was pretty
sure that I shouldn't have been able to see them from so far away.

Despite
all of that though I
could
see them, in fact it had been almost like my eyes had been instantly
drawn to Taggart. It reminded me a little of the way that I could
feel his presence lately whenever we were in the same dream together.

Heath
was a massive, dark presence at my side and after a couple of steps I
realized that he was purposefully holding back so that he could pace
me.

"Don't
wait for me, everyone else needs you up there!"

My
words came out in a breathless hiss, but apparently that was enough
because Heath exploded forward with his very next step and suddenly I
couldn't see anyone else. I could definitely hear the rest of our
group though. Judging by the screams coming from the right and left
of me, at least two wolves had peeled off from the main group and
started a circuit through the rest of the building to take care of
any stragglers.

The
vampires had been inside of the building for at least a couple of
nights, so we were figuring that they probably set up in the middle
of the building so as to reduce the chance that someone would be able
to see lights or some other evidence that the building was no longer
abandoned. Given that, it was a good idea to try to pick off the
guards we suspected they had posted around the perimeter of the
building.

All
of that had been covered in our final planning session, but somehow
after the eerie, near-silence of the initial phase of the assault I
hadn't been ready for how much of a shock it would be to hear people
screaming for help as their throats were ripped out only a few dozen
yards away from me.

The
doors ahead of me had been muffling most of the sounds of the
fighting up ahead, but now that I was closer that wasn't the case. I
finally burst through them into what looked like our own little
corner of hell.

It
was better lit here, partially due to a larger set of skylights in
the ceiling, but mostly because someone had restored power to this
part of the building and there were still a few light bulbs that
hadn't burned out before the last owners had vacated the place. The
light was even bright enough for me to be able to make out all of our
people despite the fact that they'd gone all ghostly and
pseudo-invisible again.

There
were bodies everywhere, and I had just enough experience in this kind
of thing to have a pretty good idea what had happened. Isaac and
Taggart had crashed through the doors and taken everyone in the room
by complete and utter surprise.

They'd
had a few precious seconds in which to wreak as much havoc as
possible and they'd each probably killed at least two or three
vampires before anyone had managed to get their weapons out and mount
an effective defense. Judging by the scorch mark across Isaac's
chest, the vampires had included at least one moderately powerful
pyromancer and my friends had momentarily been pushed back as the
number of vampires facing them had increased even faster than Jenners
and the wolves could enter the fray.

It
looked like every single one of our people was sporting at least a
couple of wounds, and there was a crumpled four-legged form over on
the left edge of fighting, but Heath seemed to have arrived in the
nick of time and once our people flickered back out of sight the
fighting had gone much better for us.

Even
as I watched, Isaac darted forward and ripped open the torso of a
tall, beefy vampire who was dark enough to nearly have been Isaac's
twin. The vampires had fallen back into an outward-facing circle in
an attempt to make sure that anyone attacking them would still have
to get past a variety of edged and pointed weapons.

The
riposte from one of the vampires in the second line, who saw Isaac's
latest victim start to fall, nearly took Isaac's head off, but all
that was doing was slowing the inevitable. We were slowly whittling
down their numbers and they were managing only glancing blows.

Taggart
wasn't with everyone else. He seemed to be working his way around the
perimeter of the room in an effort to find my parents. The melee in
the center of the room was moving too quickly for me to risk a shot
so I started off towards Taggart, but before I managed to take my
first step in his direction the door to one of the offices flew open
and
she
came out.

I
had a second to realize that I should have known all along that
things had been going too well, and then the entire building vibrated
like a bell. A massive shockwave like nothing else I'd ever seen tore
through the center of the room at a height of just over six feet
tall—just barely above the heads of the crouching vampires—
and knocked both Jenners and Isaac into the far wall with enough
force that neither of them got back up after they hit the ground.

Maybe
I would have been able to manage a more effective response than just
standing there in shock, but at that precise instant Tristan started
screaming in my ear.

"It's
a trap! Brindi just started screaming that Alec was going to die and
then she collapsed. I think she's still alive, but I can't get over
to her. You guys need to get out of there!"

The
idea of Alec being dead, of having lost him before I'd even managed
to really get to know him, should have been safely confined to the
back of my mind, to the dispassionate piece of me that took over when
it was time to shoot and kill people, but somehow the grief made it
past my barriers and swept through me with such force that I couldn't
even manage to get my gun up and take a shot at her before she called
out to one of her people.

"Mathews!
Find me the one who's making them invisible."

A
tiny little man from the center of the circle pointed directly at
Heath and another shockwave blasted through the room and took Heath
in the chest, driving him into the large piece of machinery that he'd
been standing in front of.

The
force that launched him into the side of the machine didn't look like
it was any stronger than the one that had picked up Isaac and
Jenners, but there was only Heath to absorb its fury and he hit hard
enough to deform the metal struts that supported this side of the
machine. His head had hit a thinner section of sheet metal, so I had
some hope that he—and the other two downed hybrids—were
just unconscious rather than dead, but he wasn't moving.

That
meant that the only people still mobile and combat-worthy on our side
were Dominic, the remaining wolves, Taggart and me. And I was still
in too much shock to even get my weapon into play.

I
felt like I should have been able to move past Alec's death. I needed
to lock it away somewhere else until I had time to try to deal with
it, but even if I'd somehow managed to do that in such a short time
the lead vampire's eyes would have probably still thrown me off of my
equilibrium. They were so different from what I was expecting that I
was honestly surprised that I'd been able to pull her into my dream.
They'd been a light blue in my mom's reconstruction, but there wasn't
even a hint of color to them now.

They
were black, and not just the pupil or the iris. The entirety of both
orbs was completely black, but not the warm, textured black of
velvet. These were the hard, featureless black of a pure vacuum. It
was like looking into a rift where nothing existed. Looking into her
eyes, I almost felt like I could see death looking back out at me.

This
was the force that had claimed Alec. She wasn't just a person, she
was somehow the embodiment of something too ancient and evil for mere
words to describe.

As
soon as Heath was knocked unconscious we all become visible. That
would have been enough to ensure that we couldn't win all by itself,
but the black-eyed vampire didn't leave anything to chance. Another
throwing gesture resulted in all of the remaining wolves and Dominic
being slammed into the wall and falling in crumpled heaps next to
Isaac and Jenners.

Most
of them weren't unconscious. There were a scattering of broken legs,
but even those who didn't seem to have been too injured weren't
moving. She was holding them in place, pressing them up against the
wall at the same time that she froze Taggart in place less than a
dozen feet from her. He'd been trying to quickly and quietly work his
way over to her, but she stopped him with nothing more than a
gesture, without even bothering to look in his direction.

"Mathews,
take a team and go secure the perimeter."

I
suddenly realized that for all that it had been accompanied with
noise and chaos in this room, the decimation of our team had taken
place with a surreal radio silence.

"Get
out while you still can, we're all…"

My
mouth snapped shut as something pushed my jaw up so that it was
impossible to get another word out.

"That
will be quite enough out of you. I have half a mind to…"

Having
her assault me directly broke something loose inside of me. It was
stupid that it took something like that to make me realize that I was
the one person in our group who was still unrestrained, but once that
clicked into place for me I reacted without thinking.

My
pistol came up smoothly, but it came up human-slow and I knew
everything depended on whether I'd managed to catch her off guard. It
took less than a second for the sights on my gun to settle on her,
but that second seemed to stretch into eternity. My finger finally
tightened down on the trigger and my gun snapped back and up as the
first bullet shot out of the barrel.

The
sight picture had been perfect, center of mass to her upper chest,
and as the recoil shifted my aim upwards I reflexively stroked the
trigger again and sent another round out as the sights momentarily
lined up with her head. They were two of the most perfect shots I'd
ever delivered, in practice or out of practice. They'd gone out so
fast that it had almost sounded like one gunshot and as I fought the
barrel of my gun back down I expected to see my enemy falling to the
ground dead, but instead I saw a pair of bullets floating in the air
just in front of her.

"I
respect the fact that you have so much fight inside of you, girl, but
we are at a crossroads right now, you and I. You can either choose to
work with me of your own free will, or I will break you and shape you
into nothing more than a tool with no free will of your own."

"Of
my own free will? After you kidnapped my family? I'll die before I'll
help you with anything!"

The
smile on her face was a cold, unnerving expression. "I don't
doubt it. You see, the first step in breaking someone is to figure
out what makes them tick. The people who have nothing more than pure
self-interest driving them are always the easiest to work with, but
the martyrs, the heroes like you, are only slightly more difficult to
bend to one's will.

"You'll
throw your life away because in many ways that is the easiest thing
for you to do. Will you throw away the lives of everyone else you
care about though? What about these two?"

With
a gesture she tore one of the doors behind her off of its hinges and
then with another pulled both my parents out of the room. They were
both tied and gagged, and they somehow looked smaller than I'd
remembered them being.

It's
a terrible thing to see your parents helpless. I knew intellectually
that my dad couldn't possibly stand up to the kind of monster that
was capable of holding Taggart and me immobile with nothing more than
the power of her mind. My head said that it was unreasonable to
expect him to be able to remain unbowed when faced with someone
capable of knocking Isaac, Heath and Jenners unconscious with nothing
more than a flick of her fingers, but my heart was having a hard time
believing that what I was seeing was real.