Dagger

  Oh, come the freak on. Only five more minutes before this entire facility went boom and here I was wasting precious time in a cockfight with the undead.

  The ghul hesitated, and then his eyes glazed over with that preternatural instinct to kill and draw blood. He launched himself at me.

  And that’s when the ceiling erupted and hundreds of the infected, ravenous bats descended on us.

  I threw everything I had into an uppercut that connected with Alessandro’s jaw. “We don’t have time for this!” I yelled over the horrific screeching assaulting my ears. “You can jam the bats sonar system with your ghul telepathy. If you mess with the echo of the sound waves, they’ll be blind. I’ll hotwire the doors open.”

  He stared at me as if I’d gone from entrée to loon.

  “Hello? Bat got your tongue?” I gripped his vest, practically tearing it off. “Use seu telepathy do ghul para atolar seu sonar.”

  Alessandro’s eyes went from predator to prey as he took in the bat maelstrom. In seconds, they assumed attack formation and headed en masse in our direction.

  “I help you,” Alessandro called back in heavily-accented English.

  Assuming a wide stance, he squeezed his eyes shut, fingers resting on his temples. I knew from experience that the strength of a ghul’s telepathy varied, depending on how old they were and how many times they’d reincarnated.

  Whatever he was doing, it was working.

  The bats broke off from their direct course and whirled around the corridor, some crashing into the walls, their bodies mashing into a bloody heap of flesh and sinew.

  Alessandro trembled from the effort, greenish sweat trickling from his forehead, out his ears. Amazing how strong the will to live could be in someone that was technically already dead.

  I pulled open the access panel which was still loose after Tresses had jerry-rigged it. All I had to do was reverse the relays and the doors would slide open long enough for us to escape into the elevator shaft. At least that was the theory.

  “Dagger, the sprites have tracked Tresses to the level above you,” Felanie announced through my com-unit. “He’s almost reached the vault. Transmitting coordinates stat.”

  A map appeared in my specs, highlighting a route through the elevator shaft and up a stairwell. “Base Ops, I have a slight rodent problem but I’ll check back with you as soon as I’ve reached the second level. Over.”

  The telepathic assault was taking its toll on Alessandro. Tears of pus now streamed from his eyes. The bats circled closer, several nipping the air inches from his face. One of the creatures snapped its jaws just to the right of my neck and I had to duck to avoid the flecks of infectious saliva that would turn me into a winged horror.

  I ripped two of the leads free from the elevator terminal. “Alessandro, get ready to run through the doors.” If he heard me, he was too busy concentrating to acknowledge me.

  I touched the two wires together. The elevator doors slid open. “Move.”

  Alessandro’s hands flew out in front of him, palms up. Slime poured from his nostrils. He must have given one final telepathic blast. The bats nearest us were repelled as if hit by a shock wave. They collided with each other, hissing and biting.

  The ghul turned and staggered to the edge of the open shaft.

  Releasing the wires, I ran toward Alessandro. The doors were already sliding closed. “Jump.”

  We both sailed off the edge into the darkness of the shaft, grabbing hold of the elevator cables to keep from tumbling into the subterranean depths.

  Before the doors could seal, a bat wedged its body between them, jaws snapping, spewing its viral infection dangerously close. Soon it was joined by others, the metallic doors buckling under the onslaught. It wouldn’t take long for them to reach us.

  Wrapping my feet around the cable, I turned to Alessandro. “Quick. We have to pull ourselves up to the next floor and pry the doors open before those things get through.”

  Before I’d even finished, the ghul was already snaking up the cable. Pretty spry for a dead guy.

  I pulled myself up a few feet and paused. The cable was vibrating. What the? A sound echoed from above. The low whine of a motor.

  Oh, hell no.

  I looked up. An elevator car was descending, no doubt courtesy of Tresses. Just below me, the screeching bats had almost cleared the door.

  I tapped my comlink. “Houston. We have a problem.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Hang on, Dagger,” Felanie’s voice competed with the whirring of the elevator motors in my ear. “Routing sprites to the elevator shaft to engage the emergency braking system.”

  I focused all my energy, scampered up the last few feet, and hopped onto the small ledge to join Alessandro in front of the doors leading into Level Two. The ghul’s long fingers were already wedged between them, attempting to pry them open.

  Above us, the elevator continued to descend, twenty-five feet away from crushing distance.

  “Let me help.” I dug my fingers into the half-inch gap between the cold metal doors and pulled as hard as I could.

  The muscles in my arms and back popped under the strain. The space between the doors widened. Three inches. Six. A shaft of light sliced through the gloom, bisecting the ghul’s face into a mask of light and dark. Ironically, he was the one that looked drained.

  My right foot slipped out over the shaft and I fell, banging my knee on the ledge. Gripping the door for leverage, I pulled myself up, ignoring the throbbing in my leg. I accidentally glanced down at the blackness. If I’d slipped just another inch I would have been yesterday’s news.

  A clash of metal thundered from the shaft below, and I had to brace myself to prevent speculation from becoming reality.

  The bats had gotten through the doors. Deafening screeching echoed through the shaft as they careened about. In seconds, their sonar got a fix on us, and Alessandro was in no shape to deflect it again.

  Whirring from above almost drowned out the screeching.

  The elevator was just a couple of feet above our heads, ready to flatten us.

  “Pull!” I yelled.

  Not caring if my shoulders popped out of their sockets, I gave it all I had, hoping Alessandro was doing the same.

  The doors slid open another six inches, wide enough for us to slip through.

  Alessandro beat me to it, wedging himself through the opening. For a sickening moment, I had visions of the ghul sliding the doors shut before I could escape. Then an icy hand shot through the gap and pulled me through to safety, enveloping me in a powerful embrace, pressing me against the coldness of his perfectly sculpted chest.

  “Phanks,” I mumbled into his left pec.

  The whining of the elevator motor cut off. I twisted my head. Damn. The sprites must have activated the braking mechanism after all. The elevator car had stopped just shy of a foot above the exposed doorway, leaving the infected bats to ram against the gap, as they struggled to wedge themselves through to attack us. Better tell Felanie to have the sprites release the brakes before they found a way to get through.

  I tapped my comlink. “Base Ops. I’ve cleared the elevator shaft and reached level two. You need to re-route—”

  “Dagger hold your position. TDT has detected remote spectral surveillance approaching, ten meters northeast and closing.”

  The temperature dropped at least ten degrees. The air reeked of sulphur.

  Awww, bats! I slipped the sunglasses over my head. “Switching to Multi-Plane-Access.”

  The non-corporeal security sentry, a.k.a Ghost Cop, floated toward us from the other end of the hallway, a swirling cloud of tortured souls, faces contorted in anguish, disembodied hands reaching out to embrace and trap their target in an ethereal prison. It was the SATs all over again.

  “I see it, Fel. Preparing to take evasive action.”

  Alessandro shoved me to the ground, pinning me on my back just inches from where the bats snapped their teeth through the widening gap under the eleva
tor car. I tried to push him off, but I was worn out and he outweighed me by at least seventy-five pounds of muscle. I’d been careless. Now all I could do was wrap my legs around his torso in a defensive maneuver and hold him off me.

  I looked up at him. His cat’s eyes penetrated mine. He was ruggedly handsome, until his full lips parted, revealing a jagged set of already-aroused ghul grill.

  It all made sense. He’d rescued me from the shaft so he could give me the shaft. He needed to feed on me and replenish his energy levels, particularly after the psychic assault. I sighed. “So now that you don’t need me you want to eat me. Typical.”

  He leered, purring like a tiger. Then he lowered his body on top of me, his chest pressing against mine, steel forearms pinning my own over my head. I wrapped my calf muscles around his broad shoulders, pushing, squeezing. But it was no use. He was in deep feeding mode now and would not be denied.

  “Dagger, spectral surveillance is almost on top of you,” Felanie warned through my comlink.

  “Yeah, well ghul agent’s teeth are almost inside of me.”

  Alessandro’s lips grazed my own on their way to my throat. Since he didn’t breathe, there was no hot breath, just a trace of frost that nuzzled my ear and my neck. He flicked his tongue against my skin.

  “Dude, you may want to rethink tasting my blood. I’m big on the gluten.”

  The ghul’s incisors scraped my neck.

  Behind Alessandro, the Ghost Cop loomed in a nightmarish cloud, preparing to strike.

  The ghul’s teeth pierced my flesh.

  Twisting my head, I whispered into Alessandro’s ear. “I ain’t nobody’s Fang Hag.”

  I shifted my pinned arms a few inches higher. Alessandro’s grip held, but the change in position brought his hands within range of the snapping bats still trying to crawl through the gap in the elevator doors.

  Several bats bit deep into his hands, which shielded my own. He raised his head and let out an anguished howl. The Ghost Cop struck, enveloping Alessandro’s face in its organic cloud. It reminded me of that old sci-fi flick The Blob. The ghul convulsed as if he were having an epileptic seizure. Bloody froth oozed from his open mouth, his hands clenched, eyes rolled back in their sockets.

  I slid out from underneath him before the expanding cloud engulfed me, too, careful not to come within range of the bats’ teeth.

  “Base Ops, I’ve cleared the sentinel,” I reported, rising to my feet.

  “Get out of there before it makes another sweep,” Felanie’s voice flooded my ear with relief. “Proceed down the corridor and make a right.”

  “Copy that.”

  I turned to look at Alessandro one last time. His body was now completely engulfed by the spectral sentry. I caught flashes of his anguished face amidst the sea of tortured souls, struggling to free themselves from the cloud.

  I almost felt sorry for him. But then again, I’d been known to shed a tear or two during a sappy movie.

  Você tem agora três minutos para alcangar a distância segura minima.

  Only three minutes left.

  Dashing down the corridor, I rounded the corner. The wall just to the left of me exploded, spraying me with shards of plaster.

  I dropped to my haunches.

  Tresses sneered at me and pumped off another two rounds, barely missing my head. A loud click echoed through the hallway. The bitch was out of ammo. Finally. He threw the gun down and took a few steps back, fiddling with a control panel embedded in a column to his left.

  “Dagger,” Felanie squeaked in my ear. “He’s activating—”

  “A laser grid, I know, I know,” I finished. “Going for the vault room.”

  I hauled ass down the corridor, but it was too late. A wall of crisscrossing red laser beams appeared in front of Tresses. I skidded to a stop just in front of it to avoid being fried.

  Scooping the empty gun off the floor, I threw it at the laser grid. It sparked and smoked upon impact, then ricocheted. I had to duck to avoid being hit.

  I moved my face as near to the grid as I dared. Tresses smirked from the other side, opened his lips, and licked the sizzling air between us. The seashell necklace sparkled from around his neck.

  “Yep. You’re most definitely a dick,” I said.

  He winked and turned to search the room behind him. It was an office with that old-style conservative law firm vibe. Dark oak chairs and desk, matching crown molding and baseboard, shelves lined with books. Sitting atop an ornate pedestal by a heavily-draped arched window was a sculpture of the triple triangles bearing the symbols of the demon and the dragon. The memory of my vision at the Treatment Center threatened to surface, but I quelched it, stat.

  “The vault is located in back of the painting hanging behind the desk,” Felanie’s voice broke in.

  “I see it.”

  Tresses was privy to this little tidbit, too. He glided over the desk on transluscent wings and ripped the portrait off the wall.

  “Base Ops,” I said tapping my ear, “I need you to reroute the sprites to the keypad and extrapolate the code to the vault room, stat.”

  “Roger that,” Felanie answered. “The cavalry’s coming.”

  I opted against commenting on the visual of sperm-like sprites coming.

  Você tem agora dois minutos para alcangar a distância segura minima.

  I only had two minutes to get into that room.

  The glittering sprites shot past me and into the keypad. I could swear I heard cursing coming from the digital unit.

  “Hey guys, how about a little less profanity and a little more professionalism?”

  The expletives increased. The numbers on the key pad’s digital readout scrolled at high speed. There were five numbers in the code. I checked the display. The first digit appeared.

  5

  Tresses was already working on the vault, sprinkling it with mystical glittering dust to get past the locking enchantments.

  Another thought hit me. “Felanie. What’s the status on that sentinel?”

  “It’s moving again. On a direct course toward your coordinates.”

  Crap.

  I glanced at the digital display.

  1

  6

  I glanced down the corridor. The cloud was visible, just rounding the corner. It paused, as if deciding which direction to drift.

  I turned to the read out.

  6

  One number left.

  Wouldn’t you know it? The Sentinel chose to float in my direction. I inched as close to the laser grid as I could without getting burned. The second it spotted me, the jig would be up.

  Você tem agora um minuto para alcangar a distância segura minima.

  “Dagger,” Felanie’s voice rang in my ear, “you only have a minute left. Forget the vault. Leave asap.”

  Inside the office, the Faerie’s spell was working. The vault door trembled, the hinges melted away.

  I risked a peek behind me. The cloud was halfway down the hallway, its speed increasing.

  “Negative, Base Ops. Just need a few more secs. Just make sure Aristede’s ready at the extraction point.”

  The vault door crashed to the ground. Tresses reached in and pulled out a package about the size of a ream of paper. It looked old, and was bundled together with a series of cords. Through my MPA visual scan, it was clear that the package was sealed by demon blood. If anyone were to open it without taking the proper precautions, they’d immediately become possessed by a particularly virulent strain of exorcism-resistant demon.

  The chill radiating from the non-corp seeped into my very bones. A misty tendril reached for me.

  There was a burst of static on my comlink. “… bats are loose…” snap “sprites” crack “disabled” pop “blind communica—” then nothing but static.

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something had neutralized the sprites’ surveillance and jammed our communications. Which meant I was on my own.

  The final digit flashed.
>
  1

  The freed bats rounded the corner and zoomed toward me.

  The laser grid flickered and disappeared.

  I’m in.

  I dashed into the office and punched in the code on the other side, reactivating the grid before the sentry and the bats could get through.

  I stared down Tresses, whose jaw had dropped at the sight of me. “What’s the matter? Cat got the Safe-Cracking skank’s tongue?”

  He traded the package in his hands for a letter opener on the desk and swooped toward me.

  I ducked, grabbing the pedestal and clocked him on the head with it. He sprawled into the bookcase, heavy tomes raining down on him.

  Leaping toward the desk, I grabbed the package. But Tresses was on me in a flash. He coiled the drapery sash around my throat, pulling it tighter and tighter.

  The room grew darker. Everything was fading fast.

  Você tem agora trinta segundos para alcangar a distância segura minima.

  Only thirty seconds before we all went boom.

  The Sliths. I hadn’t had to use them to break into the safe. They were still dormant in the tattoo.

  I reached my hand into my thong and scratched the snake tat coiled at my hip. I felt the spark as the Sliths were unleashed. I concentrated, willing them the image of Tresses as their target.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw the microscopic reptilian oracles crawl up my body and into Tresses ear canal. His hands loosened their grip. He grabbed his head and spun around the room, convulsing.

  Você tem agora dez segundos para alcangar a distância segura minima.

  Just ten seconds to go.

  I rubbed my throat. “By the way, I worked my thong much more fiercely than you did. Now sashay, away.” I ripped the seashell necklace from his neck, twirled, and kicked him hard in the gut. He crashed through the arched window in a shower of splintering glass.

  Você tem agora cinco segundos para alcangar a distância segura minima.

  Five seconds.

  Four.

  Three.

  I smashed the necklace against the desk. There was spark and a puff of smoke.

  Two.

  One.