SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series) (26 page)

“I hope you rot, walking around or not.”

She sneered at him, ignoring the spittle. “Not in this climate. It’s the only benefit of the cold.”

Masters tried to think of a rejoinder, but he honestly had too much on his mind at the moment to pull off any type of witty banter. With both arms locked up, he went with what he knew and threw a kick at her crotch.

The heavy-booted kick landed solidly, causing the thing to look down, and then back at Masters.

“Did you actually think that was going to do anything?”

“I had hopes, yes.” He tried to shrug, then redirected his force with a vicious stomp to her shin.

That
did something. He heard a crack of bone and suddenly felt weightless as he was thrown across the room. Behind him he could hear inhuman ranting and raving, and he figured that he wasn’t going to have much recovery time before she was on him again.

Assuming I don’t go splat all over the damned floor!

The world was a rush of colors around him as he got control of his flight, twisting to see the cement of the platform coming up at him in a hurry. He hit in a skid, rolling onto his back and throwing his arms out to stabilize himself, all too aware of the edge that was rapidly approaching.

Hands all but clawing at the cement, he struggled to slow himself before he was flung off the platform. His legs went over the side, but Masters flipped over and clawed into the cement just enough to bring himself to a stop. He had to fling a leg over the edge and roll himself back up, but at least he wasn’t a red spot on the cement floor below.

He rolled to his feet, coming up in a crouch as he pulled the kukri he’d taken from the assassin from his belt, and looked around warily. He didn’t have to look far this time—the thing wasn’t even bothering to hide as she moved casually in his direction. Masters swallowed a surge of bile as he noticed that the bone of her skull as wobbling a little with each step.

That’s just not right. I don’t care what you are, if your head looks like a broken egg you shouldn’t be walking. Or breathing. Or anything, damn it!

Not having much of a choice, however, he steadied his grip on the kukri and shifted to a fighting stance. The blade wasn’t a stabbing weapon, so he knew he’d have to use slightly different tactics than he might with a recon blade, but its chopping power was significant and if he could get in one good strike he might have a hope of walking out of this fight in one piece.

“You must be kidding me,” the thing scowled at him, its eyes focusing on the blade in his hand. “A Clan blade?”

Masters’s eyes flicked down to the kukri, then back to the monstrous thing approaching him. “Does everyone know about these yahoos but me?”

She laughed, a dry sound that rasped against his nerves. “You hold one of their blades, but do not know about the Clans?”

“I didn’t ask for a resume when the prick tried to gut me.”

She laughed again. “You make enemies like a man with nothing to live for.”

“I’m a United States Navy SEAL, bitch,” he told her, angling the blade ahead of him as he prepared to strike. “The only easy day…was yesterday.”

“Yesterday was your
last
easy day.”

Nathan hissed, a growing frustration threatening to blow his normal cool completely out of the water.

He’d managed to move, mostly undetected, across at least half a mile of the town on his way to the electricity co-op. The problem was that as he got closer, the number of the frigging vampires roaming the streets kept increasing. He was now being forced to stick to the rooftops to stay undetected.

That wouldn’t normally be a problem, but this was a damned shantytown compared to most of the places he had fought in, and that included the Middle East. Rooftops were poor cover when they mostly belonged to single-story dwellings, and even if they had decent cover, they were spread too far out for him to stay on the high road permanently.

The power co-op was surrounded now, with bodies pressed up against the doors almost fifteen deep. They wouldn’t hold for long under that kind of pressure, Nathan was quite certain; he didn’t know why they hadn’t busted open already.

His Sassy was all but worthless, an experience as foreign to him as it was unpleasant. He didn’t have remotely enough ammunition to make a dent in the horde of inhumanity he was seeing, and attracting the creatures’ attention would likely be the last thing he ever did.

Maybe I should have begged a lift from the captain.

Another thought and feeling as foreign to him as it was unpleasant, if he were being honest with himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t think the captain was good people, but frankly, she had no business being with them on this op. He could see the chopper’s lights blinking in the skies overhead, and he just shook his head.

It had briefly set down on the roof of the power facility, just enough of a touch-and-go to let the team off before heading back into the sky.

Smart.

He wouldn’t want to leave a chopper on the ground around here—he could just imagine the scene when it took off and some bastard thing popped up from behind the pilots and tore them to shreds.

Not that we could nuke this place from orbit anyway.

He sighed, looking down at the rapidly thickening mass of inhumanity shambling along the road and pathways below him. It was clear that some of the things they were seeing were in a lot better shape than others. He inched back from the edge of the roof, eyes locking onto a couple of the walking dead beneath him that looked a little sprier than their fellows.

I hope the boss has a plan.

I need a plan.

Masters threw himself to one side, barely evading a lunging strike from the woman, thing, whatever the hell she was. He’d learned the hard way that her clawed fingers were as dangerous as daggers, as they’d torn his Kevlar vest to shreds.

He swung his right hand up, slashing her with the kukri, and was rewarded with a hiss of pain that even his bullets hadn’t elicited, as well as her sudden retreat. Masters shoulder-rolled back to his feet and spun around, putting her cleanly in the center of his field of vision.

This bitch is going to rip me apart one piece at a time if I don’t do something drastic, and soon
.

He decided that there was pretty much nothing to be gained on the defense, as she was tearing through everything he had. That really left only one option. Well, two if you counted retreat.

Yeah. Not doing that. Time for the best defense
.

For a moment neither of them moved. Masters’s eyes fixed on his opponent. He needed an opening, but until he saw it he was unwilling to commit.

His moment came when her glassy eyes flickered away from him for a second. He launched forward, his arm cocked back to strike, just as she moved toward him. They met in the middle…honestly, more on his side of the line than hers, much to his chagrin.

Masters slashed his kukri down, only to be blocked by her forearm and forced to hop away as her claws tore into his Kevlar again. He twisted, sweeping her feet automatically, but he only managed to trip himself up—she didn’t even twitch from the impact of his combat boot on her ankle.

She stepped nearer to him, only inches from his face, and the smell of death and decay was almost enough to make him gag. He’d seen mass burials, walked through fields where corpses had been planted like seeds at a farm, and the smell of decomposition had never affected him quite this strongly. He didn’t have time to do more than try to keep his stomach from strangling him, however, before she broke through what remained of his defenses and wrapped her hand around his throat.

It was like another scene in one of those bad horror movies, he thought wildly as he was lifted off the ground by his throat.

His throat screamed for his attention, and all he could do was kick out uselessly in response to the lack of oxygen and crushing pain.

“I’ve played with you enough,” she hissed in his face, the smell overpowering. “Time for you to go away now.”

Her grip tightened, and Masters knew that he had only seconds before she crushed his larynx and probably only seconds after that before she did the same to his spine.

“Do you understand now, I wonder?” she mused, sounding casual and almost idle as she slowly strangled him. “You really never had a chance. Even your friend, The Black, was out of his depth. Did you really think I would be as easy to defeat as my servants?”

His heart was pounding so loudly in his ears by then that he couldn’t hear her as she droned on, not that he really expected her to say anything of interest anyway. Masters kicked out, catching her solidly in the gut, but she took the blow easily, without even grunting.

Have…to…

He had to do something beyond clutching at her iron-solid grip. He knew he was at his last inch of line and life, literally. Masters called up what strength he had left and lifted his right arm as high as he could, bringing his curved kukri blade down on her as hard as he could manage.

That brought him a reaction.

She roared in pain and rage as the blade bit through her flesh and into bone, and shook him like a ragdoll. How his neck didn’t just snap, Masters would never be able to guess, but he held on with his left hand as he began to hack at her arm with the captured weapon.

It took three blows.

Three blows from a weapon he knew could go through his thigh, bone and all, in a single poorly aimed strike. Three agonizing blows while he hung on for his very life, but when the third landed, he felt the bone give away, cracking beneath his weight.

Masters hit his knees, still holding onto her arm as he went down. Ragged and desiccated flesh
tore
as he took the limb full from her body. It was still clenched around his throat and he had to drop the blade to pry it off, finally pulling in a deep breath as he tore the dead thing from his neck. He was still gasping for air when a dark snarl made him look up.

Oh crap. She’s pissed
.

In point of fact, judging by the expression on the monster’s face—once he adjusted for the insane damage he’d already inflicted on her—she looked
beyond
pissed. That was understandable, and wasn’t what was worrying him. What was worrying him was the fact that even after having her arm
hacked
off, this…thing, woman, whatever she was…looked quite able to
do
something about her anger.

And he was pretty much her only target at the moment.

Ah fuck
.

The thought had just enough time to cross his mind as she grabbed her arm from his grasp, holding it in her still-attached limb, and then snarled a wordless, guttural sound of pure rage before she
backhanded
Masters with her own dismembered hand. The blow sent him spinning to the cement, rolling to a stop some forty feet away.

He flopped listlessly onto his back, his vision blurred as he looked over at her approaching form without even the strength to sit up.

Masters smiled at her, his teeth bloody and his face bruised.

“What are you possibly grinning at, you simpleton? I’m going to rip your flesh from your bones, then feed you to my servants,” she promised him darkly as she approached.

“Maybe, bitch.” Masters kept grinning like a loon as she stood over him. “You gonna give them that arm of yours too?”

“Insufferable piece of filth…,” she muttered, placing a foot on his chest and forcing him flat on his back.

Masters felt the pressure escalate—it was more than he would have thought she could exert without leverage—and in seconds he was again gasping for breath as she made it more and more difficult for him to fill his lungs.

She leaned over, looked deep into his eyes, and cocked her head slightly to one side.

“Die slowly,” she told him. “I can see the blood vessels bursting in your eyes. Beautiful, you know. Soon your soul will end, and then there will be nothing left to light those lovely orbs. Oh, the things I will do to your body…”

That would have sounded rather nicely dirty if it had come from another source, or if he was not in the process of being crushed, Masters thought wildly. Lights were popping in his vision, and all he could do was weakly slap at her leg with his hands.