The Vampire Hunters (Book 2): Vampyrnomicon (14 page)

Drake gave the kitchen one final sweep with the light. “Clear.”

Alison climbed the rest of the way up the stairs and joined Drake, standing beside him but facing in the opposite direction. Drake moved across the kitchen to the door leading in to the row house. Alison followed, walking backwards to cover their rear. They paused by the open door to the pantry. Drake shone the light around the pantry. Nothing. Motioning with his head, he led them down the small hallway and into the main section of the row house.

The two hunters stood in the foyer. Their laser/lights danced across the soiled hardwood floor encrusted in years of accumulated dirt and dust. Dozens of candle stubs dotted the floor along the wall. Drake’s light fell on the balustrade of the winding staircase. He ran it up to the second floor, then along the landing and up to the third floor.

Alison backed up until she bumped into Drake and spoke softly. “We could still walk away.”

“I wish. But we have to clean out this nest.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Me too.” Drake turned slightly. “Let’s check out this room to my left.”

“You first.”

The two sidestepped across the foyer to a set of double doors, the right ajar. Drake walked through and quickly swung the laser/light from the far left corner to the far right. He saw nothing in this room except for the boarded and painted-over windows, a dust-covered mahogany table in the center of the floor, and more candle stubs.

“Clear,” said Drake.

“Thank God.”

Drake stepped back into the foyer and crossed over to the first of two doors on the opposite wall. He grabbed the doorknob in his left hand and slowly turned it until the tumblers clicked. He turned to Alison. “Ready?”

Alison raised the Remington to chest level and nodded.

Drake pushed open the door and stepped into the room, scanning it with his laser/light. Alison followed him but veered right, placing her back against the wall, ready to provide cover if necessary.

“Oh, Jesus.” Alison shook her head.

Even Drake found the stench overpowering. In addition to the usual covered windows and candle stubs, this room contained a mattress heavily stained in blood and infested with cockroaches. The stench came from a pair of corpses discarded against the far wall. One body appeared mummified, as though it had been there since the founding of the nest. Its skin had turned gray and leathery, tightening around the skull and ribcage and receding around its mouth to expose its teeth. Drake could not even guess at its age or sex.

Not so the other corpse. Drained of all blood, this one was a week old at most. Its eyes, though shriveled, were still intact, and its lips had yet to pull back over its teeth and gums. Although decay already had started to claim the body, the corpse could still be identified as that of a young woman. Maggots swarmed in the decayed bite wound on her neck and in the tear in the body cavity where the abdomen had expanded and burst due to the gases generated during decomposition. A dozen cockroaches swam across a pool of dried bodily fluids.

“This is a good sign,” said Drake.

“You’re joking.”

“No. It looks like the body has been here only a week at most. If the vampires are draining their victims for food rather than turning them, then the nest may not be as large as we thought.”

“Small comfort.”

The hunters continued their search.

Stewart stood against
the police barricade, taking photos of the row house. Jessica hung around the command center, hoping to pick up some tidbit of information to flesh out her article. Unfortunately, everyone hustled around too much for her to pick up more than a few fragments of conversation.

Jessica saw someone in a suit exit the tactical communication vehicle and head over to Roach. She had never met him before, but from photographs knew him to be Joel Preston, Roach’s special assistant. Preston stepped up to the chief and whispered something in his ear. Roach nodded and patted Preston on the shoulder, then turned to face the others.

“All right, people. Let’s move out.”

The policemen by the barricades pulled the structures to one side while most of their companions climbed into their squad cars. Roach followed Preston into the back of the tactical communications vehicle. Within seconds, a dozen police vehicles were racing down the street toward the row house. The squad cars pulled into a semi-circle in front of the targeted building, the police inside jumping out and taking up firing positions behind their vehicles. The tactical communications vehicle stopped behind the semi-circle of squad cars. Within a minute, enough fire power was brought to bear on the row house to take down a small army of humans.

It was still not enough to take out a handful of vampires.

Stewart walked up beside Jessica and motioned for them to join the others. “It’s show time.”

The search of
the first two floors had turned up nothing but several darkened rooms. Rather than comfort Drake, it served only to further place him on edge in anticipation of an inevitable attack.

Reaching the top of the stairs leading to the third floor, Drake walked down the landing to the first door on the right and swung it open. He and Alison raced into the room. Again, nothing. This room looked like all the others, except that one of the windows along the front of the room was broken, allowing a small shaft of sunlight to filter in. The broken glass also allowed in sound. Drake and Alison heard a commotion outside. Moving over to the window, Alison stood with her back against the wall as Drake looked out onto the street below. A dozen police vehicles sat out front of the row house. As Drake watched, policeman climbed out of the vehicles and took up firing positions.

“This isn’t good.”

“What?”

“The police are launching a raid. There are at least twenty to thirty cops down there.”

At that moment, someone who at this distance looked like Chief Roach raised a bullhorn to his mouth. “This is the police. You have five minutes to come out with your hands over your head.”

Drake stepped away from the window. “I think we better get out of here.”

“That’s the best idea you’ve had all day. Let’s go.”

The two hunters headed out when a figure in a Georgetown University sweatshirt suddenly appeared in the doorway. It crouched in preparation to lunge, snarling. On instinct, Drake raised the Glock and fired three rounds. The vampire ducked back behind the door jamb, causing all three rounds to slam harmlessly into the wall across the stairwell.

“Shit. I miss—” Alison kicked Drake’s legs out from under him, knocking him backwards to the floor.

Jessica involuntarily crouched
when she heard the gunshots coming from inside the row house. It told her that Drake was inside, and in the line of fire.

From three cars down, a policeman issued a single command.

“Fire!”

A barrage of
gunfire burst through the front windows of the row house, sending a shower of glass and wood shards across the room. Drake rolled over onto his stomach. He had dropped the Glock when Alison knocked him to the floor. Looking around, he finally found it lying against the wall. He side crawled toward it when another snarl came from the doorway. The vampire in the Georgetown University sweatshirt had returned. This time it pounced, sailing across the room toward Drake.

Drake forgot about the weapon. He rolled onto his back and started to raise the stake to chest level, but it landed with its knees on his abdomen, knocking the wind out of him. Its right hand pinned Drake’s stake hand to the floor. The vampire bent over to bite Drake’s throat. With his free hand, Drake grabbed it around the neck and pushed back. His muscles strained, and his elbow felt as if it would snap. He was not strong enough to hold back the vampire for long.

Alison saw Drake in trouble. She began to get to her feet to go to his assistance when another commotion at the door caught her attention. A vampire in a denim jacket rushed out of the room to the rear of the row house and headed down the stairs, pausing just long enough to stare at the hunters. It jumped from the stairwell to the main floor. A second vampire, a female, followed but stopped when it saw Alison. Bearing its fangs and snarling, it rushed down the landing and burst into the room, aiming at Alison. Alison did not have enough time to bring the shotgun around. Instead, she fell forward and rolled onto her right shoulder, crashing into the vampire’s legs. It sprawled to the floor and slid into the wall.

Finishing her roll, Alison came back onto her feet just as a stray bullet buzzed by her head, missing her by inches. She ignored the near miss, focusing her attention on the battle at hand. Alison turned to face the vampire. It rose to its feet directly in front of the window. Alison raced forward. The vampire arched its back and roared, ready for a fight. Instead, at the last second, Alison shifted her body and used the forward momentum to launch a sidekick to its chest. Caught off balance, the female vampire was propelled backwards, crashing through the boards and shattered glass covering the window.

“Jesus Christ!” one
of the policeman yelled. “Top floor! To the right!”

The gunfire tapered off as everybody watched the body of a young woman come crashing through one of the top floor windows of the row house, presumably jumping to her death to avoid the hail of bullets. Except that she sailed backwards through the window. The instant she hit the sunlight, she let out an inhuman scream that drowned out the din of the raid. The body began to smoke and burn. When she finally hit the sidewalk three stories below, she exploded into a small cloud of ash.

For a moment, the gunfire ceased.

“What the fuck just happened?” asked a policeman standing beside Jessica.

Jessica knew, but was not about to explain. However, she did have a plan for helping out Drake.

“Chief Roach, shoot out all the windows in the row house.”

“What the hell good will that do?”

“Whoever these people are, they’ve spent so much time underground or shut up indoors that they can’t handle sunlight. Shoot out the windows and you’ll drive them to cover.”

Roach pointed to the remains of what had just fallen from the third floor. “But that doesn’t explain—”

Preston ended any further discussion by raising the bullhorn and issuing a new order.

“Concentrate on shooting out the windows. Start with the top floor and work down.”

After a momentary
pause, the gunfire resumed with an increased vigor. It all seemed directed at Drake and Alison.

Alison fell backwards as a pair of bullets whizzed by on either side of her head. One tore through the broken end of a board covering the window, showering her face with wood shards. She winced.

Each of the bullets ripped away more of the covering from the windows. One bullet blew out a pane of painted-over glass, allowing a beam of sunlight to fall across the sweatshirt vampire’s face. It screamed and released Drake’s stake hand to cover its wounds. The vampire tried to run, but Drake grabbed the sweatshirt in his right hand, holding it in place as he plunged the stake into its heart. An animalistic bellow filled the room. Blood gushed from around the stake. The vampire tore at its chest, trying to dislodge the stake, but only succeeded in increasing the rate of destruction. The skin peeled off, slowly at first, then more rapidly. Peeling soon became disintegration. Ash fell on Drake from a growing cavity in the vampire’s chest. The larger the cavity became the greater the rate of disintegration, until its entire body turned to ash and crumbled onto Drake. Drake coughed, spitting up some ash that had fallen into his mouth.

Seeing Alison not too far from him, her eyes shut tight, Drake rolled onto his stomach and crawled over to her.

“Are you all tight?”

“I just have something in my eyes.” Alison rapidly opened and closed them several times. “I’m all right now.”

“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Jim had spent
nearly fifteen minutes in complete silence. He hated it. Every moment seemed like an hour, giving his imagination way too much time to devise dozens of reasons, most of them unpleasant, to explain why he had not yet heard from Drake or Alison. When the first gunshots rang out inside the row house, Jim narrowed the reasons down to the bad ones.

A minute later, he wished for the silence again.

Not knowing what caused the gun battle that raged upstairs seemed worse than being in it. He checked his crossbow and satchel bag, twice, and settled down to wait for Drake and Alison.

A few minutes later, he heard a noise upstairs in the kitchen.

“Drake? Alison?” Jim whispered. “Is that you?”

No answer.

“Guys,” he said louder. “Are you there?”

The growl from the doorway warned Jim the intruder was not friendly. He swung his flashlight up the stairway. A vampire in a denim jacket inched down the stairs, its fangs exposed in a sneer. It looked alternately between Jim and the tunnel opening, uncertain as to which was more important. Jim raised the crossbow and trained the laser sight on its chest. It snarled threateningly.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose upstairs, the hail of gunfire echoing through the basement. That settled it for the vampire. Giving Jim a desultory snarl, it sprang forward and disappeared down the tunnel before Jim could fire off a bolt.

“Heads up,” Rodriguez
warned his men. “Someone’s coming.”

More like something. Although he could not distinguish its features at such a distance and in so poor a light, Rodriguez could tell by the way the thing scurried down the tunnel head first that it was not human. Withdrawing his service revolver, he aimed it up the tunnel. “Stop or I’ll shoot! This is your only warning!”

The animalistic growl and the glare of its blood red eyes provided the answer he needed. He fired three rounds up the tunnel, and heard the dull thud of metal impacting against flesh. Instead of falling to the ground wounded or dead, the thing paused and growled its defiance.

“Some help here would be nice,” Rodriguez said on the verge of panic.