Dread Nemesis of Mine (24 page)

"Dash Armstrong," I said. "At least, I think
that's his name. It sounds almost too stupid to be a real
name."

Adam wrinkled his forehead. "You've got to
be kidding me."

"I kid you not. The dude's name really
sounds like some kind of action figure from the fifties."

"No, that's not what I meant," Adam said,
shaking his head. "Dash is one of the Dream Team from the Arcane
Tourney. He studied under Aston Beaumont himself."

"Why does that name seem familiar?"

"Beaumont is the one who lost an arm as
payment to Underborn."

My mind flashed back to before I'd ever met
the slimy asshat. "Beaumont's the sorcerer who won the tourney
every year, right?"

"Yeah, until Folder Reeves came along, and
Beaumont had Underborn kill him."

Fausta held up a hand. "Can you stop this
Dash Armstrong?"

Adam's eyes blazed with determination. "If
he stands between me and Felicia, he's a dead man."

Bella extended her wand and turned in a slow
circle before stopping, the tip angled slightly down. "I have the
source located." She looked at Adam. "You stay with Fausta. I will
take care of the source. Get a fly-eye up the moment I do."

"Why don't we do this the old-fashioned
way?" Elyssa said. "And use our eyes. Chasing after that power
source might be a waste of time."

"Maybe," Fausta said, a distant look of
concentration on her face. "But there are other reasons to take
down the wards."

I waved off their arguments. "I'll go with
Bella. If we don't have the power source down within fifteen
minutes, go ahead with the attack."

"I'll scout around the old-fashioned way,"
Michael said, his eyes meeting Elyssa's. "We need to know their
positions and numbers if this doesn't work."

Fausta narrowed her eyes. Nodded and pointed
at the wall. "Okay. Recruit Borathen, it looks like you could climb
the wall and keep cover behind the buildings. Use it for a scouting
position and tell me what you find." She looked at Michael. "See if
you can find our trapped squads. If you can take any attackers out
without detection, go for it. Meanwhile, I'll sneak around to the
left side of the courtyard and see what I can see. Meet here in
fifteen and we'll go with whatever option is left to us."

Elyssa gripped my hand and squeezed three
times.
I love you.
It was our top-secret code.

I squeezed back and smiled. "Kick ass,
baby."

She raised an eyebrow. "Don't I always?"

I motioned to Bella and led her to the exit
of the dumpster corral. The area was clear. We sneaked down the
stairs. The same groups of noms were still below, partying it up,
somehow oblivious to the battle raging topside. One kid with a mop
of curly hair offered us a toke on a joint the size of a cigar as
we passed. I waved him off.

"How interesting," Bella said as we made our
way down a side hall. "Instead of donkeys, these kids turn into
vampires."

"Donkeys?"

She led me around a corner and shook her
head. "Kids these days."

"Did I miss some reference?"

She rolled the wand between her fingers in
an absent-minded motion. "What do you think about Harry?"

Women and their ability to change the
subject.
"You mean Shelton?"

"Who else, dear?"

"Uh, well, he's quite a character." I wasn't
sure what she was getting at. "I mean, I think you can trust him
even though he definitely has secrets."

"Hmm." Bella stopped all of a sudden, and I
almost bowled her over. The hall terminated in a stone wall. The
short Arcane said a few words, and let go of her wand. Instead of
falling, it hovered in midair. She thumped the narrow end, spinning
it. It spun slower and slower until, like a compass drawn to the
north, pointed right at the wall.

"It must be on this level," she said. "Or it
would point down."

"Illusion?" I asked.

She picked up a loose bit of mortar and
tossed it at the wall. It bounced off with a convincing
thunk
. "It could be a solid illusion." She sighed. "I could
use the path-finding spell I used under El Dorado, but it might
give us away to the Arcane."

"Maybe there's an easier way," I said,
walking the remaining length of the hall while trailing my fingers
down it. A third of the way on the other side of the corridor, my
fingers went through the stone. "Aha!"

"Excellent work, Justin." Bella patted me on
the arm. "Sometimes, we Arcanes forget there are many ways to skin
a goat."

"Are there really that many ways?"

She nodded and walked toward the fake wall.
"But one way is usually better than the others." She held a finger
to her lips and vanished into the fake wall.

I followed. We'd gone about a hundred yards
down the dark passage when the rumbling growl of what sounded like
a wounded animal echoed off the stone walls. My eyes met Bella's
glowing peepers. I motioned her behind me and crept to the corner.
Light flickered from beneath a closed door. The handle turned
without noise and I eased it open. Inside was a laboratory straight
out of a mad scientist's wet dreams.

Opened crates were scattered everywhere. A
large stack of them leaned ponderously against the wall next to the
entrance. I saw a partially disassembled gray man strapped to a
worktable in the corner to our left. Metal cages, all empty from
what I could tell, cluttered the back of the room.

Dash sat before a large aluminum table,
manipulating a three-dimensional holograph of the courtyard
upstairs, zooming in and out to look at two groups of Templars,
which looked like they were pinned behind one of the stone
buildings in the courtyard. He circled a group of vampires in the
image and they glowed. As he dragged his finger from one location
to the other, I saw one of the vampires touch a headset and motion
for his group to go to the location.

Good god, it's like a freaking video
game.

As Dash zoomed into another area, I saw
inert bodies of black-armored Templars mingled with those of
vampires in an open space between the building and the vampire
army. I realized if I could take over Dash's display, I could
pinpoint all the enemy locations. Not only that, but I could tell
them to move into strategically bad areas to give the Templars an
even better chance at beating them.

I whispered my idea to Bella. She jabbed a
finger at a huge Tesla coil in the center of the room, streaks of
black and white energy racing around its edges as it occasionally
gave off a burst of radiance in all directions.

"Is that the source?" I whispered.

She shook her head. "No, it's only a
focus."

Another bellow of pain echoed from somewhere
in the room, but a quick glance revealed nothing, thanks to all the
stone columns holding up the ceiling. The bellow sounded somewhat
familiar to me.

"Does he have a crazy supernatural animal
guarding him?" I thought back to Yolo, Vadaemos's companion beneath
El Dorado. The strange animal turned out to have more bark than
bite, and I hoped Dash hadn't captured the poor thing.

Bella shrugged. "I don't know. But whatever
is powering the coil must be attached to it somehow." She pointed
to a thick cable running across the floor and behind a thick
column. "It must be behind there. You sneak up to it and detach the
cables." She held a hand out as the tesla coil spilled another
flash of energy into the air. "Dash has attuned his focus, the
coil, so it benefits only him with the energy. If it's not
disabled, he'll be able to replenish his magical energy at a rate I
can't hope to compete with."

I nodded. "I'm on it."

Hard-soled shoes echoed in the hallway we'd
just come through. I grabbed Bella and pulled her behind the
closest stack of crates.

She whispered something and waved her wand.
I hoped she was cloaking us in invisibility, though it didn't seem
to be the case.

"Why haven't you moved our forces in for the
kill?" said Maximus.

I poked my head up and saw the rogue vampire
towering over Dash's seat.

Dash looked up at him. "I guess it depends
on how many soldiers you want to lose. They're cornered but still
dangerous."

"We have far more soldiers than they do.
Send them in. This isn't one of your games where you have to get it
perfect." Maximus's eyes wandered somewhere to his right. "Have you
finished with the potion?"

"It came out perfect. Even though we didn't
have much of the spawn's blood left to work with, it diluted a lot
better than I thought it would."

Maximus nodded. "Excellent." He motioned at
the screen. "Finish them off. I'll deliver this batch of potion to
Atlanta."

"Is the next attack still on schedule?"

Maximus paused in his turn. "Two more days.
By then, we'll have the spawn back and can resume production of the
potion."

Dash looked uncertain. "You really think
he'll show?"

"He has a weakness for weakness." A grin
split the vampire's red lips. "The girl is broken and worthless,
but I have no doubt he'll return to claim her."

I sure didn’t like the sound of that and
hoped Felicia was really okay.

He checked his watch. "I'll be back soon. I
expect the Templars to be in body bags when I return. "With that,
Maximus walked behind a column.

The Tesla coil hummed louder and louder,
energy flashing off it in waves. The air crackled and the smell of
ozone permeated the place. It flashed bright one last time and the
hum faded and died.

"What the hell?" I said in the lowest
whisper possible.

"An arch," Bella whispered back. "Good
heavens, they have one here."

If that was true, Maximus was gone, probably
back to Atlanta. No wonder Christian's people hadn't seen him using
La Casona. This was bad. Really bad. This meant Maximus could set
up arches in other cities. He could distribute the vampire potion
all over the world. I gritted my teeth. Not on my watch, damn
it.

I motioned toward the Tesla coil and made a
breaking gesture with my hands. Bella nodded. Slipping out from
behind the crates, I stayed low and skulked my way toward the other
side of the thick columns in the middle of the room. I probably
could have stalked over with a marching band behind me and Dash,
absorbed in annihilation, never would have noticed, but I took no
chances. Using a column for cover, I peeked around it and saw the
arch. It wasn't a large one, just wide and tall enough for a car to
drive through, embedded in a pedestal of polished black stone like
the huge ones. Obviously, it wasn't like the portable, expanding
ones Kassallandra and Pokito had used.

Either Dash knew how to make the things or,
more likely, Daelissa had helped him move one from another
location, and showed him how to attune it. Hopefully disabling the
power source for the Tesla would render the arch unusable. I didn't
want to worry about Maximus returning with reinforcements.

"What the hell?" Dash said.

I glanced at the holograph and saw him zoom
in on Elyssa, perched on the wall and peering out across the
buildings toward the gunfire. He studied her for a moment, and
flicked the view, searching until he found the rest of the group
hiding out near the dumpster corral.

"Son of a—" he centered the image on a group
of patrolling vamps and highlighted them.

I couldn't waste any more time. Keeping low,
I followed the thick cables back toward the cages in the back of
the room. Something hissed to my right and clanged hard against the
cage. I looked up in time to see a vampire—no a vampling—straining
against the bars to reach me, its eyes glazed with death, rotting
lips peeled back from broken teeth. I backed away and heard a
cooing noise behind me. I spun.

"Da nah," said a cherub from inside a barred
cage of some kind of clear material.

The dark creature's skin glistened like oil.
A round orifice lined with sharp teeth opened on its otherwise
featureless face. My knees went weak at the sight and I almost fell
on my butt and back into the vampling's arms in an effort to avoid
the thing, even though it probably couldn't reach me through the
strange container imprisoning it.

My foot found the thick cable, however, and
I tumbled to the ground. Rolling away from the danger zone, I
pushed myself up and looked at the creatures. What the hell was
Dash doing with these things? Was he experimenting on them? I
didn't have time to ponder. Turning, I followed the cables where
they led into a small room in the back.

I raced through the doorway. Giant jaws
snapped in my face as I nearly smacked into a creature the size of
a really, really big snake strapped to the floor with diamond
fiber. The breath caught in my throat as I looked down the glowing
maw of the monster. It was nowhere near full size—a baby perhaps?
Whatever the case, I now knew where the power was coming from.

A leyworm.

Daelissa must have given Maximus more help
than anyone realized, I thought as I regarded the beast. It would
take some kind of crazy, supernatural powers to capture this thing.
Red parietal eyes the size of my head gleamed at me above a long,
lean muzzle more like that of a crocodile than a snake, complete
with ridged forehead and two horns curving back atop it. It
bellowed like a wounded bear, revealing a maw of obsidian shards
and the bright glow of energy from deep inside its throat.

I ran down its length, all fifteen feet or
so and found why the poor thing was bellowing in pain. Its scaly
hide had been gouged down to raw flesh. The cables were attached to
two large, silver terminals someone had plunged into the leyworm's
body. It made me wince just looking at them. I reached out a hand
to touch one of the terminals. Sparks flashed in my face. A
magnetic force backhanded me against the wall.