I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (38 page)

“Motherfuckin’ leather boy.”

The jailer roared behind his gas mask and
cracked the whip against the wall.

“He one of the guys,” Boone spoke to Frank,
keeping one eye on his opponent, the other on the discarded
12-gauge, “one of the guys done this to you, Goose?”

The tip of the cigarette glowed red on the
earthen floor.

“Yeah.” Frank’s voice feeble. “He’s one of
‘em.”

The jailor drew his arm back and Boone
whipped the H&K UMP around, the barrel tracking, the whip
cracking, knocking the submachine gun out of his hands.

“You just crack that whip at me,
faggot
?” Boone yelled at the jailor and the man charged,
raising the executioner’s axe overhead in one hand, swinging the
whip in the other. The whip struck Boone in his side and he snarled
as he pressed his arm down on it, trapping the thong as he freed
the machete from its sheath on his thigh. The axe came down but
Boone blocked the man’s arm with his own forearm, the whip freed
but ineffective at this close range.

The machete cleaved the air and buried itself
in the jailor’s waist below the ribs, the man making a noise behind
the gas mask. Boone kneed him in his right side and followed that
with two more to his core. Pressed against the wall, the stone and
earth cold against their bodies, each had an arm raised, Boone
blocking the axe’s descent.

Sluggish from his wound and all the blood
that was pouring out of him, the jailor let go of his whip and
drove his fist into Boone’s side. Boone pinned the hand the same
way he’d trapped the whip, controlling the arm. He let go of the
machete and drew the Anaconda, cocking the hammer with his thumb.
The jailor freed his arm and brushed the revolver aside as its
first round exploded out of the barrel into the wall.

Boone reversed his blocking arm, closing his
hand over the axe handle, bringing the axe down, the spiked handle
driving deep into the jailor’s hairy midsection. The man squealed,
the skull axe’s handle sprouting from his torso, its double blades
glinting in the torchlight.

“Yeah, you motherfucker.” Boone pressed the
revolver to the jailor. “Here!”

The Anaconda’s second round blew an enormous
hole in the masked man. The impact would have knocked him off his
feet but he was pressed to the wall with nowhere to go, Boone
holding him up. The gas mask lowered to the man’s chest as if he
were having a look. Boone put a third shot into the man’s bare
chest and a fourth through the glass eye goggle of the gas mask,
the thundering booms reverberating amid the dungeon.

“Oh Frank…” Boone’s voice trembling.

“Kid.”

“Frank, I’m getting’ you out of here.”

“No kid.” Blood dripped from the ends of
Gossitch’s arms into the collection bottles. “Listen to me, kid.
Just disappear. Let it go.”

“I can’t let this go, Frank.” Tears in
Boone’s eyes. “Not this. None of this.”

“You have to. It’ll kill you.”

“
Oh
Frank
.” The vampire that
had hissed at Boone mimicked him. “Oh Frank look what they’ve done
to you. Boo-hoo-hoo—”

Boone crossed the space between them and
raised the .44., cocking it, the vampire hissing at him, “So you’re
Boone? You don’t look so—”

Boom
!

“What about you?” He turned to the next man
chained to the wall. “You a vamp too? Huh?”

The man’s lip peeled back in a sneer,
revealing fangs.
Boom
! Another cloud of dust floated to the
ground.

“Kid...”

“How ‘bout you?” Boone turned to the third
prisoner, a young woman, disheveled from her time in the dungeon
but still pretty. “You a bloodsucker or not?”

“Wait.” The way she said it, not asking, not
begging.

“What?”

“Don’t kill me.”

“Nice try.”

Click
.

The Anaconda’s hammer fell on an empty
chamber, the revolver emptied. “Fuck me.”

“No. Listen.”

“No.” He began reloading, his hands shaking,
overcome with emotion, Frank’s state, Boone dropping shells amid
the tears streaking down his face.

“No—
please
.”

“Shut up—”

“My father—”

Frank speaking up from the chair, “Listen to
her, kid,” but Boone saying to the woman, “I said shut the—”

“My father is a liar.”

“What?” Boone paused as he reloaded the
.44.

“He sent you, didn’t he?”

“Who do you think sent me?”

“She’s his daughter, kid. It’s true.”

Boone wiped the back of his hand across his
cheek, staring at her, really seeing her for the first time. A
woman,
shit
, she wasn’t much more than a girl, but no,
no
! he reminded himself, she was no girl or woman, she was a
fuckin’ vampire, like all those other—

“Get her out of here, kid. It’s too late for
me.”

“My father is a liar.”

Boone thought of the stories Rainford had
subjected him to. How much the old fuck liked to talk. “Your father
is a liar. What parts?”

“Everything.” Her gaze was steady on him.
“Every bit of it.”

“I take those things off—” Boone nodded to
her shackles “—how do I know you won’t go right at me?”

“Because I won’t.”

“She won’t, kid. Listen to her.”

“I want the same thing you want,” she told
Boone.

“Oh yeah, and what do you think that is?”

“I want him dead.”

“You know
exactly
who she means,
kid.”

“Free me,” the woman implored Boone, “Free me
so I can kill him.”

“Kid, she hates him as much as you do.”

“I doubt that.” Boone fished the keys from
the mess that was the jailor crumpled on the earthen floor. “Oh, I
really fuckin’ doubt that.”

He unlocked her shackles and she stepped away
from the wall, massaging her wrists.

“Thank you.” When she said it he saw the
fangs in her mouth. Yeah, another fuckin’ bloodsucker.

“Boone.” Damian stood on the stairwell
landing. “Move out the way.” The grenade launcher was gone, an
H&K UMP in both of the blonde’s hands.

“The fuck Damian?”

“
Her
.” Boone stood between Damian and
the girl. “She doesn’t leave here.”

“She’s Rainford’s daughter, Damian.”

“I know what she is. And it’s not
negotiable.”

Frank in the chair with his back to Damian:
“Take him out, kid.”

“It’s got to be done, Boone. Now move
aside.”

“You mean you’ve got your orders,” the girl
spoke to Damian. “Don’t you?”

“Your orders?” Boone demanded.

“Do it, kid.”

“Last time I ask, Boone. Move or I go through
you to get to her.”

“I love ya kid,” Frank told him, Boone
saying, “Love you too, Goose,” then to the man who stood above
them, “You know, Damian, I knew not to trust you—”

“I said move over goddammit, Boone.”

“—knew not to trust you the minute Enfermo
recognized you.”

Rainford’s daughter dived from behind Boone,
Damian swiveling on the platform, the UMP’s full-auto tear
deafening, Frank jerking up straight in his chair, gouts of blood
erupting from him. The girl—fast the way only a vampire could
be—with the Benelli in hand, taking Damian’s legs out from under
him with three quick blasts. Damian toppled off the landing, the
UMP firing out into the ceiling, a jangle of shell casings on the
steps.

“Gossitch—Gossitch—Gossitch.”

Frank was dead, sitting there with his chin
on his chest. Boone checked the pulse in his neck to be sure, the
last time he’d have any kind of contact with his closest
friend.

“Do you trust me now?”

He turned to the girl. She had the muzzle of
the Benelli on him, lifted it away. “Do you?”

“I’m numb.”

“Boone…” Damian was crawling across the
floor, dragging his shredded legs behind him. “Don’t leave me
here.” He was going for his cleaver, lying there just out of reach.
“Not like this.”

“
No
.” Rainford’s daughter stepped down
on the blade as Damian’s hand wrapped around the cleaver, trapping
it there. “Tell him.”

“Boone…”

“
Tell
.
Him
.

Damian looked up at Boone, his face pained.
“It told me to find her…”

“
It
,” Boone repeated.

“Rainford.”

“And?” The girl prodded.

“…and kill her.” The blood sopped from
Damian’s legs. “Rainford said she couldn’t leave here. She
can’t
leave here, Boone. Please, Boone, don’t—not like
this.”

“So.” She looked at Boone, who’d raised his
revolver and sighted down the barrel on Damian. “Do you trust me
now?”

“No.”

“Boone!”

The Anaconda jerked in Boone’s hand, its
blast cutting Damian off forever.

Boone snorted and sniffled, his lower lip
jutting out. He looked over at Frank slumped in the chair.

“This way,” said Rainford’s daughter.

Yeah

Foley.

Who’s this?

It’s Bill. Gritzowski.

True Gritz.

How you doing Foley?

I’m good, Bill. But why don’t you tell me how
you’re doing. You’re the one calling me at, gotta be, what? Eleven
o’clock Friday night.

After eleven. I didn’t wake you up?

No.

How ‘bout them Yankees huh?

Yeah, how about them Yankees. Save the small
talk, Bill. We both know you’re not calling to talk baseball.

See, that’s what I like about you, Foley.
You’re an astute observer of the human animal.

Yeah, usually after they’ve keeled over
though.

You got anything for me?

On what? Oh wait, let me guess: our friend
with the literary flair?

Yeah, him.

You seen his bullshit in the papers.

I’m looking at it right now.

What a bunch of malarkey, right?

In what way?

There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s like it’s
all thrown together, bunch of deranged garbage. His psychosis right
there in black and white.

I don’t know.

Bill, what do you mean you don’t know?

There’s something, something there…

You drinking Bill?

You are too.

Yeah, well, I didn’t say I wasn’t. Listen,
what time is it?
Hey
-
Zeus
, I got work in the morning.
Hey, look, you get like this, don’t be going and calling Cathy,
okay? She’ll definitely think there’s something wrong with you. And
she’d be right, too.

I didn’t.

Yeah, you’re a liar. Well, listen Bill,
there’s nothing new from my end. He’s gonna get caught, it’s gonna
be because he puts himself out there, trips himself up.

He’s putting himself out there right now. I’m
looking at him doing it here in the newspaper in front of me.

Yeah, well. Look, Bill, it’s getting late.
Let’s call it a night.

Sure. Good talking to you, Foley.

Likewise, Bill. Goodnight.

They were almost to the staircase when
Rainford’s daughter stopped, her arm across Boone’s chest, pressing
him next to her, their backs flat against the wall in shadow. Boone
about to demand
what
? but she’d already reached out and put
a palm across his mouth. A second later two black-clad Ninja broke
from the stairwell without a sound and headed down the opposite
corridor, away from them. One glanced back—had he detected
Boone?—but did not pause, continuing on his way, intent on their
destination.

The half dozen soldiers in their combat gear
made more noise as they came down the stairs and followed in the
direction the Ninjas had gone. Hidden in the shadows that reigned
between each burning torch, Boone and the vampire woman could have
waited patiently and escaped up the stairs. But thoughts of Frank
in that chair, all those tubes in and out of him, that
fucking
dunce cap—

“Hey!” Boone leveled the shotgun, stepping
away from the wall, around the vampire woman, the soldiers turning
towards his voice but he was already squeezing the trigger,
catching the last men to pass in their backs. Hands went skyward,
submachine guns tossed in the air, Boone triggering the Benelli as
fast as he could work his finger, the men in the front of the line
turning around to face him as they folded and went down. The
shotgun blasts reverberated in the tight corridor.

The Benelli empty in Boone’s hands, its
barrel smoking, bodies crumpled in the passage.

“Great,” remarked Rainford’s daughter,
starting up the stairs, a clamor from above stopping her. More
soldiers poured down the stairs, the H&K UMP in her hands
blazing to life, the vampire female controlling it, one hand on the
foregrip, soldiers spilling down the stairs, one man cartwheeling
past.

Boone squinted, thinking he’d seen something
down the corridor.

“Boone!” She had her hand out for a magazine.
He fished one from his webbing and handed it over when he saw them,
the two Ninja coming back down the passageway, little more than
shadows themselves, moving incredibly fast, a glint of firelight
against the sharpened steel one wielded.

Boone cleared the 9mm he wore, not enough
time to reload the Italian shotgun, the pistol in his hand barking,
his rounds sparking off the hall walls, the Ninjas moving faster
than any human being should be able to, dodging back and forth, up
and down as they came, seeming to run across the walls themselves,
Boone already a terrible marksman, all his shots missing.

The pistol broke open on an empty chamber at
the exact moment the first Ninja reached him, the warrior dropping
to its palm and delivering a handstand kick dead center to the red
cross on Boone’s chest, his other leg snapping out, batting the
spent pistol from Boone’s grasp. The Ninja kicked him twice more
from the position—Boone knocked back—before springing to his feet,
turning at the bottom of the stairs to face Rainford’s daughter
right when she fired a short, ragged burst from her reloaded UMP,
the Ninja’s chest exploding in puffs of air and the thing crumbled
where it stood, dust cascading to the corridor floor.