One punch.
He was unbelievably strong. Far stronger than the one I’d fought at the hotel.
Jesus Christ. It was all I could do to suck in half a lungful of air. Kevlar stops bullets, not foot-pounds of impact.
Move or die, bellowed my inner voices. Cop and Warrior, both of them shouting at once.
As the king of the Upierczi came at me I launched myself from hands and knees and tried to drive my shoulder all the way through his midsection. I’m two hundred pounds and six feet tall buck naked, and that’s a lot of PSI to absorb.
Turns out, not only was he strong as a bull, he could fight. He caught my charge and with both hands and a pivot of his hips sent me flying again. I collided with a line of Upierczi and we all went down. The impact tore a cry of pain from me; they merely grunted. They were laughing as we hit the ground and cold fingers were suddenly plucking at me.
“No!” bellowed Grigor. “Leave him be. This one is mine.”
Disappointment flickered on their faces, but that was quickly supplanted by evil smiles. They shoved me to my feet and one of them even steadied me and slapped dust from my clothes. He gave me a friendly grin and a wicked wink.
“Thanks,” I said, then I flicked my rapid-release folding knife from my pocket and whipped the blade across his throat. It wasn’t my best cut, not even that deep, but the whole knife had been soaked in garlic oil. Mr. Friendly staggered back, clutching his throat while he gurgled a wet scream.
Everybody watched him fall, watched the blood geyser from his throat and then fade to a trickle. Then every set of red eyes shifted to stare at me.
I moved away from them and dropped into a fighting crouch, blade ready for Grigor.
“Garlic,” he observed. “Clever trick.”
“Come over here and let me show you how it works.”
We all had a good laugh over that.
The other Upierczi began circling me again, laughing, taunting me, pretending to lunge at me. Some—friends of the dead, I guessed—told me how I would die and what I would feel. Not really necessary—Grigor was about to show me firsthand.
He lunged in and swatted at my knife. I evaded but only just. He was wary of the garlic on the blade and his hesitancy allowed me some seconds of breathing room. I pressed that advantage, leaping at him, slashing and hacking with a dozen overlapping cuts. But all I really cut was air.
Then he faked high and came in low and wickedly fast. He punched the bicep of my knife arm and the whole arm went dead. The knife clattered to the floor. Grigor rose from his crouch and hit me again in the chest. Same place. Same effect.
I flew backward into the stack of packing crates, splintering the side of one that was the size of a refrigerator.
In the movies, these crates fly apart like they’re made of balsa wood. In the real world they become a network of sharp splinters and jagged edges that gouge into you, tear your skin and your clothing, and pin you like a butterfly on a display board. I was stuck fast, my shoulder caught as surely as if an alligator had its jaws clamped around it.
I couldn’t free myself. Couldn’t escape.
Smiling, Grigor stalked toward me as all around us the vampires howled in the darkness.
Chapter One Hundred Sixteen
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:18 a.m.
Violin felt a small vibration in her earpiece and she tapped it.
“Go,” she said very quietly. The sound of the refinery in full operation was like thunder. Two sentries walked along a catwalk twenty feet below her.
“Daughter,” said Lilith, “listen to me. We have new intelligence. We’ve cracked the Book of Shadows. It has everything the Order has ever done. Names, places, dates. Everything. Mr. Church is going to coordinate a worldwide police action against the members named in the most recent entries. We are going to tear the whole thing down!”
“Oh my God!” cried Violin. “That’s—”
“There’s more. You need to find Joe Ledger right now.”
“That’s what I’m trying to—”
“No, listen. No matter what it takes, no matter who gets in your way—find him. Church is certain Grigor is there.”
“What?”
“The device is unarmed. Vox helped the Upierczi obtain and position the bombs, but he withheld the activation codes until they gave him the full spectrum of a gene therapy to cure his cancer. Upier 531. Daughter, they’ve made Hugo Vox one of them. Now Vox is fulfilling his end of the deal.
Grigor is there to activate the Aghajari bomb. He has a device for it, a code scrambler. He has to be stopped.”
“I’ll cut his—”
“Listen,” said Lilith sharply. “The code scrambler has all of the codes on it. All of them, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Daughter,” said Lilith, “we figured out where the other devices are. You have to get that code scrambler. If those other devices are activated … God.”
“Where are they?”
Lilith told her.
Violin had to clap a hand to her mouth.
Before another second passed she was moving. Leaping down to the catwalk, running nimbly along it, heading down toward the basement. Looking for Joe Ledger.
Looking for Grigor.
Racing to save the world.
Chapter One Hundred Seventeen
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:21 a.m.
I bellowed my pain as I tried to wrench my flesh from the teeth of that shattered crate, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Grigor bent low, his body language becoming like some animalistic and predatory thing, vulpine, unnatural. His mouth was a wide, red slash in his pale face. He flashed out a hand and knotted my hair in his fist. Blood ran down my face, blinding my right eye, snaking hot lines inside my clothes. My arms were pinned by the jagged wood and I couldn’t reach my back-up knife clipped inside my pocket. He could have killed me right there and then. I knew it, he knew it. My life was nothing to him, an inconvenience at worst or an amusement at best. But he paused before going for the kill.
“Your world is going to die,” he snarled.
It was the kind of grandiose threat that might have sounded corny in pretty much any other circumstance. Not now. Vampires with nukes. Yeah, they get to mouth off any way they want.
The best reply I could manage was a wheezy, “Yeah … well fuck you.”
Not original, but effective. The effect was, however, that he pulled me halfway out of the nest of splinters and then slammed me back in, deeper.
“When the bombs go off,” whispered Grigor, “your own stupidity and paranoia will drive the nations together into a war that will devastate the earth. When the skies darken with ash, your kind will cower. When the fallout spreads, they will sicken and die. In the coldness of nuclear winter, the Upierczi will rise up and claim dominance.”
“Not a chance,” I said, but that was defiant bullshit.
His plan was a pretty good one. The war would probably start as soon as the bomb in Pakistan detonated. That government was conflicted and paranoid, and ever since SEAL Team Six popped a cap in Bin Laden on Pakistani soil, political tensions have been high and hostile. They would never believe that the bomb was triggered by vampires. I mean … who would believe that? Sure, I was a true believer right now, but I wasn’t going to be there to testify to the existence of monsters. No, the bomb there, the bombs in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the bomb in Louisiana, these were going to be seen as acts of war, and war would be the result. By the time anyone ever figured out what the hell was going on, the whole world would have become a hell.
And the Upierczi could live in a radioactive world. They were perfectly adapted—and genetically modified—to live in the world they were making.
The fact that this was all becoming crystal clear to me right now was a pain in the ass. Would have been nice to have put this all together back at the Arklight camp, and then sipped a beer while Church ca
lled in a multinational airstrike on Grigor.
As Church said, “If wishes were horses.”
“I thought you believed in God,” I said, fumbling for something to use as a lever. “How does this serve Him?”
“Read the Old Testament,” he said. “Our God is the God of vengeance and warfare. We are the new chosen people. We were chosen by Father Nicodemus and blessed by him in God’s name. Your kind should worship us.”
I had no answer to that. I’m not a theologian. So I again fell back on my old favorite. “Fuck you.”
Another pull and slam. Hard enough to rattle the whole stack of crates. A whole new array of burning points of pain blossomed where my body was pressed into the splinters. He leaned in close—not close enough for me to bite his nose, though—and snarled at me to worship him, emphasizing it with another shake. I was getting chewed up pretty bad by the splinters and blood was pouring down my body. I could feel it running out of my hair and down my cheeks.
“The Red Order thought they were working to maintain the faith,” said Grigor, his tone full of mockery, “but they polluted their own mission. When the bombs go off, every human who survives will be on his knees. Not the first bombs—no, that will merely start the war—but the three we have placed on the altars of faith.”
“What … are you talking about? Where are those other bombs?”
Grigor leered at me and the other vampires laughed. This was the heart of their plan, and the delight they took in it crackled through the air like electricity.
“We will strike the very heart of the faiths whose stupidity and superstitions have made monsters of my people, and whose pointless holy wars have done nothing but drive people away from faith. When I have drunk your life, Captain Ledger, I will send the activation codes that will detonate high-yield nuclear devices that we have placed in tunnels beneath Jerusalem and Mecca and the Vatican.” He leaned close. “Do you think that will bring the faithful to their knees?”
Chapter One Hundred Eighteen
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:23 a.m.
John Smith lay prone on a catwalk and tracked a dark-clad female figure with his scope. He had crosshairs on her the entire time. His finger lay along the outside curve of the trigger guard.
Without moving he said, “Company’s coming.”
In his earbud, Top said, “One of theirs or one of ours?”
Before he could answer, a second figure leaped out of a place of concealment and landed right in the woman’s path. The second figure moved unnaturally fast and he whipped out a long, curved dagger.
One of them.
John Smith slipped his finger into the guard, but before he could wrap it around the trigger, the woman ducked under the swing of the knife and there was a flash of silver in each of her hands. The Red Knight seemed to disintegrate into a cloud of bloody mist. Part of him landed on the catwalk, the rest fell into the steam below.
“One of ours,” said John Smith. “I hope.”
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:25 a.m.
I thought I had heard the worst, most shocking things I could hear. I was wrong.
Jerusalem.
Mecca.
The Vatican.
God almighty.
The King of Thorns sniffed the blood on my face and then suddenly darted his head forward, his tongue slithering out like a snake’s to lick fresh trickles from my cheek. It was a horrible thing, invasive, intrusive on a level I’d never personally experienced before, and deeply disgusting. He took a second, longer lick and I tried to squirm away from his hot tongue running over my jaw and cheek and all the way up to the corner of my eyebrow.
He pulled back for a moment, and his smile was truly horrifying.
I think I screamed.
His face wrinkled in disgust and he spat out the blood, but then he smiled. “Eating garlic is an old trick. You have to do it for years before your blood is poison to us.”
He laughed, stretching that mouth wider still. I recoiled and thrashed and kept screaming. Then Grigor bent closer still and pressed his cold lips to my ear.
“Hugo Vox gave me a very special list, my friend. Would you like to guess what is on it?”
My heart froze in my chest.
“There are Upierczi in America. Even now, even as you die here, my brothers are heading toward Baltimore. Shall I tell you who will die?”
He whispered the names of my father, my brother, my sister-in-law, my nephew.
“If your brother’s wife is still fertile, we may let her live. Our birthing cells are waiting. But she will see her husband and child torn to pieces and consumed.”
I howled in fury and tried to tear myself free of splinters. All I accomplished was to drive the jagged points deeper into my own flesh.
Grigor was not done with me. His lips moved against the flesh of my ear. “I can spare her. She will still die, but she can die quickly … and whole. You can save her. I offer you a chance to assure an easy death for those you love.”
“Go to hell.”
He slapped me so hard that I felt a tooth crack. But the impact shifted me in the nest of splinters. I felt one shoulder suddenly slide free, greased by my own blood. The rest of me though, was still trapped.
“I’m offering you a chance to save your family. Are you too stupid or heartless to listen?”
“O-okay,” I wheezed. “Tell me…”
“Pray to me,” he said. “Fall to your knees and pray to the King of Thorns. Pray to the Upierczi. Be the first of your kind to worship us and you will earn my mercy. That’s all you have to do.”
Around me the Upierczi had fallen into an expectant silence.
I closed my eyes and thought of my sister-in-law. Jenny. Beautiful, sweet-natured. A schoolteacher and mother. I thought of my brother, Sean. A detective, a loving husband, and father. And Sam, his son. Cute, smart as a whip, and an expert on all things baseball. He wanted to play third base for the Orioles when he grew up.
If he grew up.
My tears mingled with the blood on my face.
“Okay,” I gasped. “Okay…”
He moved slightly back, easing the pressure that held me within the shattered crate.
“You will be remembered as the first of your kind to—”
“Fuck you,” I snarled as I tore my loosened other shoulder free of the splinters and clamped my right hand around his balls.
Full-fist grab, hard as I could, backed by all the terror and desperation that howled in my mind.
Grigor’s eyes flared wide and he tried to simultaneously back away and twist his body free, but I clamped down and held on with everything I had. I came out of the crate with a spray of bloody splinters, and hit him across the face with my left. Once, twice, twisting his nuts as each punch landed. His scream was so high and loud that stalactites trembled loose from the roof and fell around us.
So I spit right into his screaming mouth. There might not be enough of garlic in my bloodstream, but there had to be a lot of it in my saliva.
Even in the midst of his pain, he stared at me in blank surprise for just a moment.
Then he hit me.
A third straight punch to the center of my chest. My hands and feet went instantly numb. I lost my grip and I lost my ability to stand as the punch sent me crashing back into the crate. I hit the corner of the big one and spun off and down, landing on my face near my fallen flashlight. For a single burning moment I could not feel my heartbeat, and I was positive that the shocking force of the blow had stalled it in my chest.
I gasped like a dying fish and could not move.
The Upierczi had begun to laugh like spectators at the Roman circus, amused at my defense but delighted by Grigor’s apparent victory.
Then their laughter died.
My body seemed to be catching fire. My chest was a solid knot of agony. I collapsed down as the darkness closed arou
nd me like a fist.
Behind me I heard Grigor gagging and keening as he staggered away from me, but he wasn’t clutching at his groin. I could just barely see him through the gathering haze. He was clawing at his own throat. His pale face was turning red, and I could see his chest labor as he fought to suck in a breath. All he managed was a high-pitched wheeze as the allergic reaction shut down his upper airway.
It was the garlic in my spit. Maybe even what was in my bloodstream. He’d tasted my blood after all. I’d eaten a whole lot more of it than Ghost had.
At least I hurt him, I thought as I lay dying. At least I did that much.
Then there was a huge sound as Grigor suddenly dragged in that lungful of air. His chest and abdomen expanded with it and he blew it out. He took another breath. And another. His color was still bad, but my trick hadn’t been enough.
He looked at me and began to laugh. It was hoarse and phlegmy, but it was a laugh of triumph.
Well, fuck me, I thought. The trick hadn’t worked after all.
Then something came out of the dark and moved at me and across me and over me. A monstrous white creature that howled like a demon from the pit as it leaped into the air and struck the King of Thorns like a thunderbolt.
The vampire’s laughter turned into a terrified shriek.
Ghost.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:29 a.m.
Maybe it was that Ghost could sense me teetering on the edge of the abyss.
Maybe it was the sound of vulnerability in the knight’s shrieks of pain.
Maybe Ghost just plain had enough.
Whatever the reason, my dog had clawed his way back from helpless terror. His eyes blazed with bottomless animal hate, and his teeth flashed as he bore the King of Thorns backward into the darkness.