SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series) (29 page)

They moved back, leaving the EOD specialist to his work. Robbie managed to keep from whistling while he worked, but it was pretty clear that he was just about as happy as he ever got. He used what was left of his stash and shaped charges that weren’t intended for antipersonnel use.

The small but powerful explosives made use of the Munroe effect to direct the force of the blast as needed. When he had finished rigging the heavy door of the storage building, he stepped a couple feet to one side, detonator in hand. Keyz glanced over at Masters, who just nodded, then turned his head away from the door and thumbed the switch.

The explosives made a distinct
crump
, the low thump felt even more than heard as the concussion passed over them. The door itself remained in place, oddly perhaps, just smoking slightly around the edges as Masters smoothly stepped into place and slammed his boot into it.

It flew inward, no longer held by hinges, and Mack and Derek stormed through, crisscrossing in front of Masters, their Heckler and Koch rifles barking sharply as they took out the sentries.

Masters was partway through the door, a “borrowed’ ” forty-five auto in one hand and his new best friend, the equally “borrowed” kukri, in the other. The team secured the other side of the door and paused just inside as they caught sight of their quarry.

“Well, that sure looks like a coffin, Alex,” Masters said as he walked around the object, eyes darting around the room intently.

It seemed too empty for his liking.

Way too damned empty.

Norton nodded, grimacing as he visibly steeled himself and began to approach the coffin with his Bowie blade drawn. Eddie dropped a big hand on his shoulder, shooting him a look that clearly questioned his sanity.

The master chief nodded to the others, and they all aimed their weapons at the coffin, only for Norton to grab Eddie’s gun and push it away and up.

“What the hell are you doing?” Eddie demanded.

“You’ll just piss her off.” Norton scowled. “This is going to be a big enough pain in the ass without making her even madder.”

“Madder than when Hawk hacked her arm off?” Eddie asked incredulously. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“You think your bullets are going to do anything useful?” Norton shook his head. “Just cover me and try to distract it if it gets the edge on me.”

“Distract it? How?” Eddie demanded. “You just said bullets would only piss it off!”

“If it’s pissed at you, it’ll be plenty distracted from me,” Norton answered, heading forward.

“Pissed at me?…” Eddie’s jaw dropped. “Oh, you bastard.”

Norton chuckled nervously as he spanned the distance to the coffin, laying his hand on the lid and taking a breath to steady his nerves as best as he could. He shifted his blade so that he had it in a reverse grip and could stab it downward. A stake of wood might be traditional, but a Masterwork blade cleaving the bitch’s heart in two should be just as effective, not to mention a lot easier to push through her rib cage.

He glanced back at the others, who were gathered all around him with their weapons held at the ready. He nodded to Masters, who nodded back, and then returned his focus to the battered old coffin and took another steadying breath.

He heaved the lid up, blade hand flashing down as soon as it swung up and over. The dagger bit down hard, sinking deep into the bottom of the coffin, and he realized with stark shock and fear that the interior was empty save for a layer of dirt at the bottom.

“It’s empty!” he snapped, jumping up and twisting around as a shadow fell from the ceiling above and landed behind Masters.

Hawk tried to turn, but he found himself wrenched from the ground by the back of his neck. His feet kicked at the air as he dropped his blade and gun, clutching at the wrist that was grasping him, desperately trying to keep his neck from being snapped.

“You’re all treading on my last nerve,” the vaguely female voice rasped from the darkness behind Masters. “But now I have you all in one place, so I thank you for that.”

Norton tensed as Masters was flung across the room, slamming bodily into the far wall with enough force to make the metal surface reverberate from the impact. He winced, but couldn’t spare a glance in his friend’s direction. He was too busy watching as the team’s rifles opened fire on the thing that had clearly seen better days.

Bullets tore through her in the darkness, spraying black gore and dried flesh into the shadows. Anything human would have long since died, but one thing every bullet made clear was that whatever this bitch was, the word
human
no longer described her. She charged the barrage of fire, blurring into motion as she slammed into Derek with enough force to throw the big man into a sprawling tumble on the cement form.

“Slow her down!” Norton snarled, chasing after her with his knife held high.

“
How?
” Eddie demanded as he whirled around, trying to get her in his sights again.

“I don’t care! Just do it!”

Eddie snarled as the shadowy figure charged the next-closest SEAL, Mack, and flung it all to the wind as he did the same. Mack tried to throw up his rifle in defense, but the steel weapon shattered under the one-armed shadow’s strike, and he found himself choking as he dropped the ruined weapon and clutched desperately at the clawed grip that was digging inexorably into his throat.

Eddie roared as he hit both of them in a flying tackle, high and hard. The blow had to have been unexpected because the brick wall he’d expected to hit didn’t materialize. Instead the three of them were driven to the ground as they all started clawing and kicking as brutally as they could.

Unfortunately for the two SEALs, when it came to kicking and clawing, they were at a decided disadvantage.

Eddie grimaced as he felt a bone in his leg snap under one of the creature’s blows, but he tried to drag the thing down. He didn’t know what Alex was planning, but he hoped he’d get to it in a hurry.

“Hold her down!” Norton screamed, throwing himself into the mix.

He planted his free hand on the vampire’s shoulder, trying to steady both himself and his target, and plunged the blade toward her. She surged under him, however, pulling Eddie into the path of his blade.

The master chief let out a bellow through clenched teeth as the razor sharp blade sliced clean into his shoulder. “Goddamn it!”

“Fuck!” Norton swore, eyes wide and shocked as he realized what he’d done.

The shock was enough to shatter his defenses, for all the good they’d likely have done him, and the creature’s kick smashed into his chest, throwing him back. Eddie was sent sprawling with the Bowie knife still sticking from his shoulder, his wound bleeding profusely onto the cement floor. Then the shadowed form rose up above Mack’s crumpled body and glared all around her.

“You think to best me? You are all fools.”

“That could be,” Perry Rand said, attracting her attention as he drew his sword from where it had rested against his back, “but fools make the world such an interesting place.”

The blade was thirty-six inches long with a deep furrow down the center, its single-handed grip wrapped in leather. The Viking longsword would not have looked out of place a thousand years earlier, but against the Kevlar body armor and pistol still resting on his hip, Rand cut an odd and rakish image.

Rick Plains drew his own blade, a similar but shorter sword, and they began to flank the vampire as they closed in on her.

The two were well accustomed to fighting, both with each other and alone, but they quickly learned that this wasn’t an enemy like any they’d ever encountered.

Perry lunged first, his blade swinging down sharply as he went in for the kill. To his shock, the female figure caught the edge of his blade on her forearm as though she were wearing armor and batted it away as she stepped in close to him, driving her hand into his chest.

It felt like his ribs were cracking, and he had to hold back the desire to puke as she breathed in his face.

“Surprised, fool?” She laughed at him. “Your pitiful excuse for a sword is no master’s blade.”

Perry jerked back as she swiped at him, his flesh burning where her clawed fingers had drawn blood across his face.

“He may not carry a master’s blade, you pale excuse for a Draugr,” a cold voice said from behind her, reverberating with power, “but he walks with comrades in blood.”

The demonic figure had begun to turn toward the voice when a flash of light blinded everyone momentarily. The weight was suddenly lifted from Perry’s chest, and he blinked his eyes, wiping the blood from them with his free hand as he hefted his sword defensively.

“This one is too strong for my skills, Per,” Hannah told him, one hand on his arm stilling his half-blind waving of the war blade. “I will need help.”

“Anytime, Hannah,” he said, “but I don’t know what I can do. She blocked me like I was a child with a foam toy.”

Hannah laid hands on his blade, and a glowing light flowed from her fingers and into the sword. “Tyr stands with you, Perry Rand. Tyr and his Ulfberht.”

Perry looked down at his blade, his vision clearing as the glow faded from the metal, leaving only a trail of glowing runes, runes that spelled out the word
Ulfberht
. He stared for a second, then looked at his companion in wonder.

“I didn’t know you could do this.…”

“Only in need, Perry,” she said, turning to Rick as she laid her hand on his sword as well, repeating the intonation. Rick’s blade glowed to match, then slowly dimmed to reveal the glowing runes that had formed on the funnel of his blade. “Now there is need. Stand ready; the battle is about to begin again.”

The two men formed up on her flanks, swords lifted and at the ready as the vampire rose from where Hannah had thrown her.

“Priest,” she mumbled, rubbing her face where she’d been struck.

Hannah sneered in response. “Priestess, if you please.”

“There is no difference.”

“Of course there is,” Hannah countered, her voice reverberating with barely contained power even as her eyes began to glow faintly in the darkness. “Priests are forgiving.”

The trio surged forward as their foe charged them, the unspoken signal to battle clear to them all.

CHAPTER

Harold Masters was not having what he’d consider a good day.

Hell, it wasn’t even a so-so day.

He was quite comfortable declaring it to be a very bad day, in point of fact. The ache in his bones wasn’t crippling, but he could tell that once the adrenaline wore off he wasn’t going to be moving anywhere very fast.

He groaned as he got to his feet, far less steadily than he would have liked, and walked on wobbly legs over to where he’d dropped his blade. After retrieving it, he turned to watch as Hannah, Rick, and Perry danced with the macabre vampire.

He couldn’t see what the hell was keeping her in one piece, given how many holes they’d blown into her body. She didn’t regenerate like they did in the movies, but damned if it seemed to make much of a difference.

Bullets just seemed to flat out piss her off, even those that left gaping wounds that would have killed a bull elephant. The heavy fifty-caliber round he’d put into the bitch’s head had literally split her skull, and he knew that it had to have scrambled what little brain matter was in there, but it hadn’t seemed to have any effect. He just couldn’t get his head wrapped around what kind of
thing
could possibly survive a hit like that.

At the moment she was taking on Hannah and two trained soldiers, and it was immediately obvious to him that all three of them were quite comfortably on the wrong side of the veil. Hannah’s punches were clearly stronger than they had any right to be, but he’d seen supernatural strength more than a few times since he’d set foot across that invisible line.

The faint glow of the swords the other two were carrying was more interesting, as was the fact that they seemed to have an effect that went above and beyond the bullets. Strikes from the weapons clearly burned and hurt her, so much so that she was dodging their blows rather than blocking them. He was impressed—they knew what they were doing.

“It won’t be enough.”

Masters turned, grimacing as pain shot through his head. “What?”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Norton said, nodding toward the fight. “They’re good, they’re very good…but she’s going to kill them.”

Masters spat out blood, then wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Not gonna let that happen. I need a plan of attack, Alex. Help me out here.”

“Cut her heart out,” Norton said, hefting his Bowie. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“First fire, now ritual sacrifice?” Masters snorted as he got ready to throw himself back into the battle. “You’re such a cheery bastard today.”

“Must be Monday,” Norton said, joining his friend as they began to limp toward the fight.

I need to learn how to fight.

Hannah had done a great many things in her short life—she’d survived trials that would have killed grown women; she’d learned secrets of the universe hidden to all but a piddling fraction of living souls—but despite her allegiance to the gods of Valhalla, fighting had never been her strong suit.

Case in point
, she thought sourly as she barely dodged a claw strike.
The three of us are getting our arses handed to us by a one-armed woman. Though, admittedly, “woman” is stretching the term a bit freely
.

Spotting an opening, Hannah lunged in and delivered a blow to the vampire’s guts with surprising force. The vampire grunted from the blow, but was barely fazed as she crushed her elbow down into Hannah’s back, driving the smaller woman to the ground.

Rick and Perry charged in, covering Hannah as she gasped on the ground, their swords forcing the vampire back as the burns sizzled in the cool air. A couple of shots rang out, and bullets tore through their foe’s face and throat—the hits would have been lethal to anything human, but they were little more than an annoyance for the creature before them.

The bullets served their purpose, though, letting the two soldiers bodily pick Hannah up and pull her back from the fight as she gasped for air.

Mack, Derek, and Judith closed with their HK417 rifles roaring, intent only on buying time and space for their comrades, but in a flash the vampire was on them with a claw strike that sliced Derek’s throat open in an instant. The SEAL went down, his rifle falling to hang on its strap as he clutched at his ravaged flesh.

“Derek!” Mack screamed, eyes blazing.

Together, the two had faced down sights that would chill other men to the core, and that was
before
they’d crossed the veil. Since then, they’d both realized that their days were numbered, but at the same time, the reality of it had never really sunk in in some ways. He and Derek had stood shoulder to shoulder for so long that he couldn’t remember a time without the other man.

“You bitch!” Mack lost his cool, charging in and hammering into her with the butt of the rifle.

For all the good it did, he may as well have struck her with a child’s toy.

The vampire shrugged him off easily, then backhanded him across the room with a single blow. He hadn’t even landed when she turned her focus to the third of their little trio, eyes fierce as she bore down on Captain Andrews, showing as little respect for her blazing 417 as one might give a child armed with a pea shooter.

Judith fired her mag dry as the thing approached, freezing when her rifle slide locked open on the empty chamber. The face she was looking at was leathery and dry, pockmarked with holes and torn flaps of flesh from her team’s bullets, but despite that and despite the glassy dead look in its eyes, the thing would just not return to the grave.

Her rifle was torn from her hand, swung away in a backhanded motion that casually hammered Robbie Keyz to the ground as he too tried to charge their adversary. The thing, the
vampire
, didn’t even looked back at the fallen EOD man.

“You are all beginning to try my patience,” the walking horror said to her, the smell of decomposition making Judith gag as she fell back. “Have you not learned yet? I am beyond you!”

Judith cringed as the vampire swung the rifle again, smashing it into a thousand pieces against the cement floor. She used that moment, clawing at her service pistol as she took a step back. Training took over—it was the only way to explain how smoothly the motions went.

Step back, clear the distance to the enemy
, she thought as she drew her weapon.
Front site, center mass. Squeeze smoothly. Repeat
.

The Browning nine-millimeter she carried barked as she fired as fast as she could pull the trigger, her target not even bothering to dodge. In three seconds the slide locked back on another empty chamber. She didn’t have time to even flinch at the knowledge that she was out of ammo before the monster gripped her hand, gun and all, with a crushing force.

Judith screamed as the bones in her hand cracked and broke, caught between the irresistible force of the vampire’s grip and the unmovable steel of her own weapon.

And then the pain was gone, like a switch being turned, and she fell to her knees as a chaotic flurry of action erupted around her.

Hitting the bitch was like a spear tackling a brick wall
.

All right, that wasn’t entirely true, Masters had to admit. Despite her strength and refusal to break, the vampire didn’t have the mass of a wall, so she moved when he hit her. The problem was that she also recovered inhumanly fast, as the fist to his spine quickly showed.

He was wearing body armor, however, and it spread out the impact enough that he didn’t lose his breath…or have his back snapped like a twig. The force still pushed him down to one knee, but Masters took that as an opportunity to slash his target’s legs out from under her.

The kukri bit deep, spattering the concrete with black ichor that used to be blood, chopping into her leg at the knee.

She dropped, screaming, though he had to admit that she sounded far more pissed than hurt. Still kneeling, Masters straightened up to look into her disfigured face, and he managed a sneer through the pain he was feeling.

“You’re one ugly bitch.”

He almost shut his eyes when he saw the look on her face, knowing that he was going to pay for that little comment. He didn’t so much as blink, though, when the blow landed on the side of his head—he just rolled with it to reduce the impact as best he could. He still saw stars, however, and black spots danced across his vision.

“That the best you can manage?” he slurred out.
Note to self: Get checked for a concussion if you live.

She snarled, any hint of intelligence gone from what remained of her face, and he grinned despite himself. He couldn’t help it, it was a slip to be sure, but before she could make anything of it, the vampire’s eyes widened in shock as three inches of steel emerged between her breasts courtesy of Alexander Norton.

Unfortunately for both of them, the blade cleaving her heart had little more effect than the bullets had, and as she wrenched about, it was torn from Alex’s hands.

“You filthy, insignificant,
pest
!” she roared, batting him aside. “I’ll bleed you all! Do you hear me? I’ll bleed you
all
!”

Masters lunged for the handle of Norton’s knife, intent on twisting it in the wound. It was the only thing he could think of now, as they’d literally tried every other option they had, given their resources. As his hand grasped the hilt, however, she twisted again and smashed a backhand blow into his chest that lifted him from his feet and sent him flying across the room, right into the coffin that was the centerpiece.

“I am all right,” Hannah mumbled, shaking off her companions’ grip as she regained her feet and balance. The power in her voice was gone, as was the glow from her eyes, but her mind was clear, and she didn’t think anything was broken.

“Are you sure, Han?” Perry asked, concerned.

Hannah had come to the lodge at a young age, delivered through ice and sleet by…well, by an unusual sort. The lodge members, vagrants that some of them might be, had taken her in, and they’d all taken a shine to the girl. She was everyone’s younger sister, so to speak, for all her power and connection to the gods.

“I am sure,” she said, straightening as she eyed the situation.