Fallen Stars (The Demon Accords) (36 page)

“Shouldn’t you have a parachute or something?” I asked.

“There’s a technique where you jump from a plane and glide in a free fall toward your target.  As you get closer, you use vamp energy—Lighten and Push, mostly—to slow your descent.  Parachutes aren’t necessary.”

“Could I learn that?” I asked.

“Well, you sorta invented it, with a little help from an elder god, so I suspect you could
re-learn
it.”

“Apparently I was a pretty cool guy before,” I said.  She slid effortlessly closer, now clothed in jeans, leather boots, and a long-sleeved black shirt that said
Lupine Sports
on the left breast.

“You certainly are,” she said, leaning in and kissing me softly with lips that could bite or command.

“Not your usual fashion style,” I commented, snaking a hand around her back and pulling her closer.

“The shirt is on loan from the Malleks.  Brock was the pilot of the little plane I jumped out of.  We used Katrina in a wig to replace me so I could sneak up here and keep an eye on your rescue efforts.  But now we have to go get that little girl and explain to people why they shouldn’t take her in the first place.”

Chapter 39

We crossed the paved runway and concrete helipad at full speed.  Our element of surprise had a rapid expiration date, and it was starting to smell.  The mechanic and pilot had been normal humans, unlike the two guys in the woods and the entire kidnap crew, who had faster reactions and greater strength.

The five guys we could hear in the cabin were likely the hopped-up kind, a guess that seemed more likely when we glanced in a window and saw guys popping pills while gearing up for battle.  Digital cammies, more of the flechette guns, and some streamlined-looking body armor getting strapped on at the same time little green pills were being issued to each soldier.

We studied the house, which was laid out like a vacation cabin at a ski resort.  Open floor plan, big freestanding fireplace on a granite base, hardwood floors, and vaulted ceilings.  Much too nice for a bunch of grunts to use as a barracks, even ones hopped up on enhancers. 

My link to Tanya was almost humming, it was so intense.  We hardly needed to speak, each knowing what the other was doing or going to do at an instinctual level.  Studying the house took a few seconds, arriving at a plan just a few more.

“I think I got this,” I said. 

She looked at me for a moment, then nodded. 

Lowering my head, I stared at the ground, channeling all my rage and worry about Toni till it filled me from head to toe.  That wasn’t hard, as I had never stopped worrying about my tiny goddaughter.  Vision almost tinted red from rage, dismay and anxiety maxed out, I walked into the house.  Not rushing, not trying to be especially quiet. 

The five soldiers were gearing up around the fireplace.  None of them noticed me as I strolled into their midst.  Their eyes just seemed to slide off me, like they saw but instantly forgot.  Nice to know other people have memory issues, too.

I stepped right into the middle of them.  “Hey,” I said.  To a man, they jerked upright.  I killed them.

Head punch (skull crushed), knife-hand strike to side of neck (spine snapped), palm heel strike to sternum (heart burst), head twist (spinal sever), and backhand fist to side of head (decapitation).

Five strikes, five deaths.  Whatever I was, whatever my reason for being, it wasn’t to kill humans, even enhanced humans—it was too easy.  My prey must be more robust, harder-to-kill.  An image of Toni crying came bursting into my brain.  I brushed aside the kills and looked at Tanya, who had appeared silently in the doorway, 'Sos by her side.  Her head tilted sideways as she studied me, both visually and through our link.

“You protect humans, but not the ones who commit crimes of terror against little girls,” she said, striking right to the heart of my issue. 

The house was one story with a partial loft, but a doorway near the garage led down a nicely finished wooden stairway to an underground corridor about twenty feet down.  At the end of the corridor, we found a massive blast door that would give a bank vault fits of envy.  It was standing open, as was the one behind it.  Each door had to weigh multiple tons, and when both were closed, it was hard to imagine what, if anything, could get through them.

“You could,” Tanya said, very softly.  Had I said anything out loud?  Pretty sure I hadn’t.

“No, you could.  It’s hardened steel; your aura would cut through it… with enough time.”

I wasn’t convinced but said nothing as she led the way through the doors and into the missile complex.

Gunfire, or at least flechette fire, greeted Tanya as she stepped through the second blast door, forcing her to accelerate forward and up—to the ceiling.  The weird ripping sound that the guns made stopped at the twin blasts from my borrowed guns.  Grim had slipped back into control and shot the two uniformed men at almost the same instant they started to fire.

The part of me that observed, the one operating with only a partial deck of memories, was yet again surprised by this uber gunfighter ability.  The Grim part moved further into what was obviously a control room for the base’s defenses.  Computers, monitors, and comm gear set up like a mini-NASA Mission Control lined one side of the room.  The center was dominated by a big spiral staircase that went down to the next level, winding around a giant funnel of dark concrete that had been dyed to look like granite.   Tanya took a flat black box from her pocket, pressed a button on it, and dropped it on a desk.  “Cell phone signal repeater.  The others are on their way, and I need to get their call when they get here.”

“Cool,” I said, admiring it without touching.

“One of the Coven companies makes it,” she explained.

I paused at the top of the stairs, listening.  A picture formed in my head, like a 3D version of a fish-finder readout.  Three guys down there, hiding in ambush, one behind a computer cabinet, the other two behind a flipped-over desk.

Flashing down the circular stairs, Grim didn’t give them time to react, shooting on the move.  Three shots, three more dead guys.  The guys behind the desk each took a round through an eye… the eye that had peeked around their respective ends of the desk.  The guy behind the cabinet never moved from concealment, but the 9mm slug that ended him came straight through a gap in the cabinet’s construction and into his head near his right ear.

Tanya and Awasos were right behind me.  Tanya held a black spike in each hand, and I could see a bandoleer with a half dozen more fastened to the crisscrossed straps of her sword sheaths.

She looked mildly annoyed as she took in the three dead bodies.

“Awfully noisy,” was her only comment.

“They already knew we were here,” I said with a shrug.

“Hmmpf!”

The room was laid out as a computer room: banks of server racks and monitors, lots of other stuff I couldn’t identify but that looked techy.  Another passage led off in the direction of the missile silo.  It was dark, all the lights out.  Silly soldiers. Vampires, were bear-wolves and strange hybrid dudes like me love dark places.  Night vision goggles are great, but we got built-in thermal vision, and I have that whole echolocation thing going on.  However, the tunnel was a kill zone and my Gramps always said that incoming fire has the right of way. 

A cluster of soldiers awaited us at the end of that tunnel, armed with those damned needle guns, so we needed something, some trick to get through.  Grim moved me to a stainless steel equipment table, dumping the assorted computers and monitors on it to the floor.  Then he went to the fire extinguisher on the wall or, actually, to the plastic tube with the words
Fire Blanket.

The rectangle of rubberized, heavy duty fabric went over the metal table top, held in place by the table’s own metal legs, which Grim bent like paperclips.  I/me/him handed the table to Tanya, the bent legs making handy holders.  She raised one exquisite eyebrow at me but then nodded and took the table.  My borrowed 9mms reloaded with fresh mags, I found my body making an a
fter you
gesture to my vampire.  Grim had a sense of humor?  That was… disturbing.

Tanya gripped the table after re-bending the legs to suit her stature, then started down the tunnel, moving only newborn vampire fast. Immediately, a storm of flechettes began eating into the thick metal table, but the fire blanket robbed the high velocity needles of enough energy to prevent their penetration.  And we didn’t really loiter.  Just a high speed rush down the tunnel and into the silo.

My guns fired so fast, it must have sounded like machine pistol fire.  Or maybe one continuous shot.  Either way, the people who heard it all died split seconds apart.  Three shots left hand gun, four shots right, each bullet finding a break or gap in armor and helmet.  Tiny orange thermal flares where the heavy military gear this group was wearing lacked coverage.  Throats, mouths, noses, all echo located or thermally spotted by my murderous alter-ego.

Tanya looked the results of my handiwork over, then turned to me with one hand out, chest high, palm toward the floor, and waggled it to show she was so-so with my performance.  I raised one eyebrow at her even as I looked around.  We were on the second level down, which was all living quarters.  Sort of an open plan with military bunks taking up about a third of the circular space.  Two thirds of the floor was made up of individual rooms and two large bathrooms.  At the far side of the floor, a spiral staircase went up one floor to the top level, the one just under the missile blast doors.  We popped up there to make sure it was empty. It was set up as a mini hangar for the smallest one-person helicopter I had ever seen.  Streamlined in a Japanese industrial manner, it looked like a tricked-out office chair with double prop blades on top.

“Oohh.  Hirobo electric.  Good for a hundred miles an hour, almost silent.  Cool,” my vampire said.

The walls around the heli-garage were stacked with gear, tools, and supplies.  It was basically a garage.

The spiral staircase led back down a flight as well, bringing us to the third level, which was lit up normally.  Tanya had reclaimed the needle-proof table, and now she thrust it at me.  “My turn,” she said, loosening the black spikes in their bandoleer holder.  She gave me a sharp shove forward and I took the hint, sprinting ahead with the table held in front.  I went faster than she had, one hand holding the table, the other a 9mm, just in case she missed one.

The now-familiar brapping sound of the flechette guns sounded briefly, a full five firing at once at the beginning of my run.  They fell silent so fast, it was like a volume dial had been turned down.  I stopped at the far end of the room, which was a laboratory, and turned around.  Five black-clad figures lay dead, strewn about the room.  Each had a spike in his or her head, some in the face, others right through the Kevlar helmets they wore.

Tanya gave me a smirk, then set about collecting her spikes.  I looked the room over, and Awasos just padded slowly onto the floor in wolf form, looking bored.

I’m no rocket scientist, but I’d been in enough biology classes in college to know I was in a genetic lab that had a little operating theater in the center.  A small fortune in state-of-the-art research equipment lined the walls around me, including a scanning electron microscope and a machine that I knew was a gene sequencer, mostly because it said it was a gene sequencer right on it.

Level four was another lab, this one geared toward electronic and mechanical systems.  A CAD-CAM computer had the schematics for a suit of the powered armor up on its monitor, like someone had left their work, sudden like.  Awasos ignored the computers and diagnostic equipment, the 3D printers and tool-strewn tables, and went straight to the back of the floor, right up to a closed door.  He lifted his right paw, it shimmered and grew larger and bearlike, and he dug the now four-inch claws into the doorjamb, ripping the metal door open and off with one twitch.

Six people filled the storage room that ‘Sos revealed.  To a person, they exemplified the whole geeky scientist/technician meme.  Lab coats and glasses seemed to be the fashion theme.

I moved closer, and one by one, they switched their terrified gazes from the giant wolf to me. 'Sos masses more than I do in his wolf form, looking like a pony-sized killing machine.  His mouth was bloody, and his expression screamed predator.  Every last member of the science staff of this AIR base grew more afraid as they focused on me.

“Little girl, dark hair, dark eyes.  What lies between me and her?” I asked, voice level and pitched low.  Something must have shown in my eyes because one of the four men pissed himself.  A woman in a lab coat with dark librarian glasses managed to meet my eyes, her heart rate jumping dangerously high.

“T-the floor below this are testing rooms.  There are drones down there, waiting for you.  Hunter-killer designs.  You weren’t expected quite yet.  The drones were going to be used against you up top, in the forest.  Instead, they just turned them loose, set to kill anything that moves.”

“Tell us about them.  Their designs, weapons, flaws.  Anything that will make getting past them easier,” Tanya said, suddenly at my side.

The brain trust flinched at her sudden appearance. The spokeswoman paused, mostly from shock at Tanya’s speed, but Tanya took it as reluctance to speak.

“Listen, the only reason any of you are still alive is because you might have some small value in helping us get our goddaughter back.  We
will
get her back, but she’s a terrified little girl stripped from her parents.  The faster she gets home, the better
we
will feel.  You want us to feel better… you really, really do.”