Death Deceives: Book Three (Mortis Vampire Series) (10 page)

Since we were so close to our quarry, I decided to
wear one of my black suits when we rose the next night. They were excellent for wearing into battle and had the added advantage of making me almost invisible in the dark. Luc smirked like the dirty old vampire he was when I left the bathroom wearing the suit. “Well now, remind me to thank Emperor Ishida for gifting you with these outfits.” His hand slid down the slick leather to squeeze my butt. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen me in the outfit but the novelty obviously hadn’t worn off yet.

“You should see me in the red one,” I teased.
Not that I’d even tried it on yet. I seemed to move from one crisis to the next without a break in between. It hadn’t given me much time to try on my unused suit. Luc’s eyes darkened but a knock at the door halted him before he could lower his head for a kiss.

Geordie pushed his way inside as soon as I unlocked the door. He spared a
leer at my outfit then headed for the TV. “You’d better see this,” he said and switched it on. Gregor and Igor trooped inside, looking even grimer than usual.

This time, the imps had attacked a larger town. A news camera panned over streets
that were littered with the dead. Limbs had been torn free and heads had been hacked off. Blood, darkened to a rusty maroon colour, covered the still forms and pooled in the streets. This was the same style of mindless carnage we’d witnessed in the catacombs beneath the Court mansion. The reporter was near tears as she tried to describe the butchery that we could all see for ourselves.

In the background, the blond
e American soldier strode past with a furious glare at her. “Get these vultures out of here,” he snarled to the group of lackeys trotting after him. Two men peeled away and jogged towards the camera crew. I doubted any humans watching the broadcast would have heard the order, it had been uttered very quietly.

“They are increasing their attacks, which means they have grown in number,”
Gregor said as Geordie muted the TV.

“We must be close to the
ir lair by now,” Igor deduced. By the way he was clutching his knife, he was eager to go into battle.

Luc turned to me. “You’d better try to sense them before we leave, Natalie. We don’t want to walk into a trap.”

Nodding, I closed my eyes and sent out my senses. I’d gotten a lot better at putting aside distractions. Even Geordie’s quiet comment that he’d like to peel me out of the suit was easily ignored. So was the kick Igor launched at the teen and the mischievous giggle that followed when Geordie successfully dodged out of the way.

Sweeping the area to the north-east, I frowned when I came up blank. Widening the search, I frowned harder. All four men were regarding me with worry when I opened my eyes again. “What’s wrong?” Luc asked.

“I can’t sense them. It’s like they’ve disappeared.”

Gregor
had an answer for my dilemma. “Then we must be closer than we thought. They’ve entered the First’s cavern and he is masking their presence from you.”

“Now what?”
Geordie demanded. “Do we search the country blindly until we stumble across a big cave?” One thing about Geordie that both amused and annoyed me was his ability to be even more sarcastic than me at times.

“I think we should question someone from the army,” Igor suggested. “They will
have extensive knowledge of the towns that have been attacked. They may have narrowed down where the imps disappear to each day.”

That was the thing that had the humans so puzzled. The imps only attacked at night and then
seemed to vanish during the day. Since most of the earth’s population slept at night, they were superstitiously afraid of nocturnal creatures. Before I’d become a nocturnal creature myself, I’d also been afraid of the dark. Rats had been another thing I’d been terrified of. Thanks to my new condition as the living dead, I no longer feared either.

“They should have figured out the
imps are hiding somewhere beneath the earth by now,” Luc pointed out.

Gregor
fisted a hand and rested his chin on it, deep in thought. We let him think the problem through without interrupting him. He was smarter than the rest of us and we all knew it. “I think Igor’s plan has merit,” he said at last. “Questioning someone from the army is most likely our best avenue. When we stop at our next destination, we should keep our eyes peeled for a soldier we can kidnap.”

Well, at least he isn’t trying to sugar coat it.
Most humans would have phrased the plan differently. It was a reminder that, while he appeared to be urbane on the surface, on the inside Gregor was a monster just like the rest of us.

With that, we trooped downstairs to our cars. Igor led this time and Luc and I followed closely behind him.
We’d been driving for a couple of hours when I heard a strange whumping noise from above. “Do you hear that?” I asked Luc. It rapidly grew louder until it sounded like it was right above us.

Peering out through his window,
my sombre companion pointed at the sky. “It’s a helicopter. It appears to have camouflage painting on it,” he said after a few moments of scrutiny.

Turning my attention back to the road, I saw
that Igor had come to a stop and that we were about to crash into him. “Look out!” I shouted even as Luc slammed his foot on the brake. Our car slid for a few feet and came to rest just behind Igor’s larger vehicle.

A pair of semi-trailers
had stopped about a hundred feet in front of Igor’s car. Smelly exhaust fumes spewed from their tailpipes, indicating that the engines were still running. The trucks were parked side by side, blocking the narrow section of highway completely. We couldn’t see who was behind the wheel, but now that we were so close, I could sense the passengers they carried.

“Um,
do you remember when you said you didn’t want us to walk into a trap?” I said uneasily.

“I
believe we may have just done so,” Luc replied. Before I could answer in the affirmative, headlights flooded our car from behind. Igor, Gregor and Geordie turned in dismay, peering out through their back window. Luc and I did the same but couldn’t make out much through the brightness.

Expecting
to be rammed from behind, I was relieved when a truck pulled up beside us instead. Several other vehicles pulled in behind it. On the side of the truck was the unexpected symbol of the Russian army. “Huh. It looks like the cavalry has arrived,” I said in surprise.

We exchanged glances as
a soldier exited from the lead truck. “I don’t think that they are quite aware they are the cavalry yet,” Luc said as the soldier unclipped a torch from his belt. He sauntered towards the idling trucks, passing Igor’s car with a brief look inside.

“The fool is going to get himself killed,”
came quietly from Igor in the car ahead of us.

“Better him than us,” Geordie
muttered.

The soldier was halfway to the semis when the
doors were thrown open. Crammed in together, the imps looked more than ever like clones. The soldier froze in shock at his first live sighting of the imp army. Grey skinned monsters with batlike faces pointed at our cars and roared in rage. Orange eyes blinked and squinted against the headlights of the army vehicles shining at them. All wore tattered loincloths that had one been human clothing, sacks or any other scraps of material they could find to cover their nakedness.

Finally
understanding what he was looking at, the lone soldier fumbled for his weapon. “It’s the unknown entities! Mow them down!” he screamed in Russian. His handgun was small but the bullets took down three of the imps with head shots. Soldiers boiled out from the army vehicles, taking cover and firing at the First’s progeny.

Luc
wasted no time in reversing out of the fray. He pulled the car over to the side of the road at what he judged to be a safe distance from any stray bullets that might come our way. Igor parked just in front of us. We exited our cars and scrambled up a low hill to observe the confrontation. The helicopter circled above, shining a light on the darker areas of battle.

While
they were big, strong and ugly, the imps fell easily enough beneath the hail of gunfire. Black blood flew as the first few ranks went down with their limbs and heads blown apart. Much faster and far more savage than the humans, dozens of imps leaped clear of the trucks and ran toward the soldiers. The night was rent with gunfire and shrieks of pain, terror and primordial roars of triumph.

Once the two sides clashed, the
odds turned dramatically in the imp’s favour. With their longer reach, they were able to tear arms off before the soldiers could even aim their weapons. A few of the monsters picked up fallen weapons and turned them on the Russians. I’d witnessed them using guns before but this behaviour indicated a level of intelligence that disturbed me. Most of the imps I’d come across so far had struck me as being one step up from drooling idiots.

I’d taken a rough count of imps as they’d launched themselves from the truck and there
were at least a hundred. They’d been crammed in the back of the trucks like cattle going to the slaughter. The slaughter they’d planned had been meant for me and my friends but the army had inadvertently come to our aid. Now the soldiers who bravely faced the ‘unknown entities’ were being decimated.

“If the soldiers hadn’t come along, we’d be dog food by now,” Geordie said in shocked wonder.

“It was pretty lucky for us they turned up,” I replied. Deep down, I wondered if this was luck or fate. I hated being at the mercy of something I didn’t even really believe in but in this instance I wasn’t about to complain.

After the initial
flurry of activity, half of the imps had been cut down. The soldiers had been outnumbered two to one to begin with and the numbers were still the same now. Twenty or so men took shelter behind their vehicles, taking pot shots at the imps whenever one stuck its head out far enough.

Falling back to their trucks, the remaining
forty-odd imps had a short meeting. Several pointed to us on the hilltop while the others shouted them down. “They’re trying to decide whether to come directly for us or to finish off the soldiers first,” Gregor said with calm detachment.

C
lutching a machete tightly, Igor shared his thoughts. “If I were them, I’d split into two teams. I’d send one to distract the soldiers and the other to target us.”

“It appears the imps have chosen
your method,” Luc observed as half of the imps wheeled off and ran in our direction. The remaining half surged towards the soldiers. Most had armed themselves and both groups started firing at either us or at the soldiers.

I’d left the backpack in t
he car but my twin swords crisscrossed my back. I drew the blades and raced down the hill to meet the monsters. Luc, Gregor and Igor weren’t far behind me. With a roar, an imp raised his gun to shoot me point blank in the face. One of my swords sheared his arm off before he could shoot me. The severed limb hit the ground and bullets sprayed the area when his finger clamped down on the trigger. Several imps shrieked in pain as the projectiles shattered their shins or ankles.

I stabbed the imp through the heart then moved on to the next one. Luc was at my
back, using a sword Igor had given him to slice and defend as the monsters tried to overwhelm me. I was their true target and they were determined to take me down. Calmly and methodically, I speared hearts and sliced throats as I worked my way into the centre of the group.

I
gnoring my friends, the imps surged forward and piled on top of me.
Are they trying to kill me or have I stumbled into a football game?
As more of the creatures joined the pile, it backed up my theory that they weren’t particularly bright. Even a normal vampire would recover after being crushed. Well, as far as I knew they would.

A mouth closed around my left hand
and bit it off. The imp grimaced at the taste and spat my hand back out again. When he started convulsing, I came to the conclusion that my blood wasn’t particularly healthy for them. Poor Lefty scrambled back into position and reattached itself to my arm with a brief flash of pain. The teeth marks healed instantly without a trace. The imp convulsed a few more times, black blood poured from his mouth, which seemed to be growing bigger by the second. Only when he gasped out a last breath and went still did I realize half of his face had melted away. I wondered if all vampire blood had that effect on imps or if it was just mine.

Pinned to the ground
and unable to squirm my way free, I grabbed two heads as multiple imps tried to tear me limb from limb. For the most part, their grasping hands slipped off my leather suit instead of closing tight. Concentrating hard, I gathered my will and let it build before flinging it into the two monsters. Instead of their heads exploding, at first nothing happened. Then the ground started to shiver, a shockwave went out and imps were suddenly flying through the air.

Sitting up,
dazedly wondering what had just happened, I surveyed the carnage in shock. I’d only had two imp heads in my hands but somehow every single monster that had been in the pile was now a headless ruin. Even the imp that had died after biting off Lefty was now headless.
Holy crap! That was awesome!
At times like this, I was actually glad to be Mortis. Even I was amazed at what I could do sometimes.