Ghost Soldiers (12 page)

Bailey pushed the truck faster as they came out of the curve and onto a long downward stretch of road. Far off to his right he could see the faint glow of Sinaia's lights. He couldn't hear much except the rushing wind and the agitated rumble of the truck's engine. The succubus was still out there somewhere. So was Cojocaru.

They rounded another bend, and the truck's springs gave a human-sounding groan. They roared out of the turn onto a section of straight road with a drop-off on the left and on the right, a sheer cliff face ending in a ledge or ridge thirty feet overhead.

Sorin Cojocaru stood midway along the ridge, near the cliff's edge above the road, with his acolytes flanking him on either side. The flame cat hunched near his boots, peering down at Karl with luminous eyes.

Bailey braked hard and the truck's back end lost traction. He had to grab the roof to keep from tumbling over the front. An instant later the truck swerved and lurched forward, picking up a dangerous amount of speed. She must've realized there could be no turning back. They'd have to race right past Cojocaru, passing beneath him if they hoped to escape.

Karl lifted the rifle to his shoulder. The acolytes around Cojocaru began to move, their hands dancing in patterns, their mouths moving as they drew energy to fuel their spells. The air grew charged and heavy.

He squeezed the trigger. The bullet took off the head of a gray-haired man standing near Cojocaru—nothing pretty about it, the man's head disappeared from the nose up in an explosion of bone and brains and blood mist. He sighted again. Fired. Another acolyte fell backward. His limbs flailed and his body jerked as blue vapor exhaled from the gaping wound and burned anything it touched. Karl took another shot. A small body, a woman's, came tumbling down from the cliff wall, flopping like a boneless thing as it painted the rock sides with red.

The acolytes scurried back from the cliff edge, taking cover. Only Sorin Cojocaru stood unmoving, watching as the truck raced toward him. His fire cat paced at his feet. Karl centered Cojocaru in the rifle's iron sights. His finger rested on the trigger, but he waited for the right moment to shoot as the distance between them steadily diminished. The fire cat would destroy any bullet he sent at the sorcerer, so he had to time this shot perfectly.

Cojocaru's arm lifted, his hand stretched out. A few inches from the surface of his palm a jagged, zigzagging rip opened in the air—a mage rift's shimmering split in reality. The sound of cracking lightning rent the air, followed by a deep bass hum. A stream of green-black liquid sprayed from the iridescent rift. The slime splattered along the roof and nearest side of their truck, and more of it hit the truck cab and the windshield. It immediately began to hiss and sizzle on the metal.

Karl pulled the trigger and the rifle kicked. The fire cat flared up in a wall of flames and incinerated the bullet, but, as he'd planned, the fire also caught the rest of Cojocaru's spell and consumed it before it destroyed the truck completely.

The truck roared past Cojocaru, swerved and kissed the side of the mountain, spitting sparks, before veering toward the opposite cliff slope. A foul-smelling cloud of greenish-gray smoke poured off the chassis, stinking of sulfur and decay. The slime had missed him, barely, but spatters of it had eaten through the Barrett's stock and part of the barrel, making the rifle useless.

He risked one last look at Cojocaru through the reeking haze. The sorcerer stared back, too far away now to read the expression on his face. The flame cat sat on its haunches with its fiery tail wrapped around it.

The road swung around again, and the truck hit the rock face with a scream of tortured metal. He had to kneel and grab the metal seam to keep from being thrown off. The truck continued to grind along the cliff side as sparks flared off and rained down on the road.

Bailey.

Most of the cab's roof had been eaten away, and the acidic slime continued to dissolve the windshield and the metal frame, corroding its way toward the engine. Poisonous vapors swirled thick clouds, but he ignored them since he had no need to breathe.

Bailey sat slumped against the steering wheel, her hands locked on the wheel so tightly her knuckles shone bone white, and her lips had pulled back in a grimace. Her jacket was missing the right sleeve from mid-biceps on down, and her flesh was blackened and smoking as if scorched by fire.

Karl leapt down into the cab. He pulled her back and grabbed the wheel, steadying the truck before it veered off the edge of a cliff.

“Bailey!” He risked taking his eyes off the road for a second to look at her arm. The flesh had a diseased cast, ridged and flayed, looking like burned hamburger mixed in with raw meat.

Her eyes were half-open and unfocused. “Hurts.”

Another turn came up fast. Karl spun the wheel, unused to the truck's clumsy handling. He oversteered and started to cut back toward the trees. He corrected again and was rewarded with another scream of metal as the frame shook. The jolt made the bite wounds on his arm and the claw marks on his back sing out in pain.

He reached down with his wounded arm and half-lifted, half-dragged Bailey across the gap between the driver and passenger seats, while keeping his other hand on the wheel and foot on the gas. Her wounds looked bad, the smell stomach-churning in its foulness, but if he stopped to try and help her, Cojocaru would catch them. He could only hope she held on until he could aid her, maybe get the Thorn's healers to save her.

He found himself praying the truck would hold together just a little longer.

 

The converted ice cream truck got them all
the way to the outskirts of Ploeşti before it began to shudder so badly Karl had to search for a safe place to stop. The night was relentless in its pursuit of dawn. He didn't have much time to find somewhere safe.

He swung onto a narrow road riddled with cracks and potholes and headed toward the distant smokestacks and distillation chambers of an oil refinery. No lights shone either on or in the buildings, no vehicles sat in the parking lot and no smoke billowed from the stacks. The old refinery was an abandoned castle of pipes, storage tanks, tower stacks and railings cutting a dark silhouette against the stars.

He stomped on the gas pedal, and the truck roared straight for the rusted chain-link fence and the rolling gate blocking the entrance. The truck gave another pained groan, now shuddering continually, and the vibration shot from the steering wheel up his forearm and made the bite wound throb. Pieces of metal fell from the frame and clanged along the asphalt behind him. The truck smashed through the gate, took a wrenching lurch to the side, and something in the back end made an ominous crunch and bang. The rear chassis collapsed to the pavement with a scream of metal and a dragon's-breath flare of sparks. Karl fought the wheel as the rear frame dragged wildly and the truck began to tilt. Too late to save it. He reached out and grabbed Bailey and braced himself as the truck tilted, still sliding, still filling the air with a horrific shriek, and toppled on its side.

The truck finally ground to a stop near a series of squat concrete buildings, just meters from a barricade of pillars. The engine stalled. It
tick-tick-ticked
as it cooled, each coming slower than the last, as if the engine's heart slowly died. Bailey hung limp in his arms, her breath warm on his neck. Everything else was white silence.

He dropped to the ground, trying not to jolt Bailey or touch her wounds. She groaned anyway and her eyes fluttered. He kicked out the remains of the windshield and carefully maneuvered her through it.

The refinery was as empty as he'd hoped. Cracks shot through the asphalt like lightning bolts and were dotted with weeds. Every window was dark or boarded over. The railings were pitted from corrosion, and a maze of pipes snaked in every direction, hooked into massive cylindrical distillation tanks and feeding through hydrotreaters and substations like veins. He cradle-carried Bailey toward the closest building. A stink like sulfur and mildew seeped from her wounds.

He kicked in the metal door. Inside he found a barren room with concrete walls, electrical boxes stripped of all wiring and gaping open like mouths, a sagging cardboard file box chewed by rats, and dirty, threadbare carpeting. The south-facing windows had been boarded over from outside.

He set Bailey on the floor, supporting her neck with his hand. Her eyes stayed closed. She breathed in jagged gasps, and a blazing heat radiated from her skin. He turned her arm to better see her wounds. No blood, just a charred, raw mix of flesh eaten down to the bone in places, into the marrow in others. He pushed back the singed fabric of her coat sleeve. Lines of black spider-webbed out from the wound's edge. He frowned as he opened her coat and pulled aside the collar of her T-shirt, careful to avoid her silver necklace and keep the crucifix concealed. The black lines had reached as far as the hollow at the base of her throat. It looked like some kind of blood poisoning—something he'd seen before on the corpse of the infiltrator he'd found tied to the signpost.

Nothing he could do to heal her. He had to get her help from the Thorn or he'd lose her. Her eyelids fluttered open. She focused on his face, her skin shockingly pale in contrast to her wild blue hair.

“I'm going to die,” she said.

Chapter Fourteen: The Call

“You won't die if we hurry,” Karl said. “Where's your satellite phone?”

“Pocket.” She started to reach for it, cried out in pain and sagged back.

“Keep still. I'll get it.” He found it in the large inside pocket of her coat. “Who do I call to get you help?”

She coughed out a laugh that stabbed his heart, a sound saturated with despair. “They can't get here in time.”

“Give me a number.”

“Don't you get it? You can't call anyone. They'll kill you. They won't get here in time to help me. I can feel this…” she waved her uninjured hand at her wounds, “…this disease eating me alive.”

He looked at her, holding the phone. Waiting.

She grunted, looked away before glancing back. “Stubborn bastard. Go outside. Orient to the north. Call this number.” She rattled off a long string of digits that he memorized. He turned to go and she called out, “Good luck.” More snarl than wish.

He closed the door on her but stayed close to the building. No security guard had come to investigate a repainted ice cream truck bashing its way through the chain-link gate. Greenish-gray wisps of smoke still curled from the frame. The right side was so riddled with holes it was more empty space than metal. The cab was half-gone along with part of the engine housing. He didn't want to think about what would've happened if the fire cat's flames hadn't interfered with Cojocaru's spellcast.

He followed her directions for the satellite phone. The phone screen read
Searching
… then found a signal, and he input the dial out and country codes. He heard a
click click
, followed by a blizzard of digital noise, beeping and chiming, and a woman answered.

“This is Command.” A British accent—something from the West Country. It made him think of London long ago. Another problem with having so many memories, sometimes triggers dredged them up at the worst times.

“This is Karl Vance. I'm in Romania, north of Ploe
şti. I have one of your people with me, and she needs immediate medical attention.”

“One moment, Mr. Vance.” A strange electronic squeal came over the speaker, then a series of chirps. Then silence, stretching long enough that he feared he'd lost the connection.

“What are your GPS coordinates, Mr. Vance?” the woman asked. “The phone screen should display them.”

He read them off and listened to a flurry of clicking and tapping keys. Now the people who'd sent him on a suicide mission and who'd given orders for his partner to cut him loose knew exactly where he was.

He closed his eyes. Bailey hadn't left him behind. He couldn't leave her here to die either. Not without trying to save her.

“Can you confirm Sorin Cojocaru's death?”

“He's not dead.”

More typing. His impatience grew.

“Bailey Fletcher is injured?”

“She was hurt during our escape. Some kind of spell damage. It's in her body.”

Long silence.

“You there?” he asked.

“The Watchers are trying to confirm. Please be patient.”

He waited, glancing around the dark buildings and smokestacks. He could feel time grinding onward, could feel a helpless desperation building inside him. She shouldn't be dying while he stood here unable to do anything but watch her life slip away.

“We have confirmation, Mr. Vance. A team has been dispatched from Venice toward your location.”

“Venice? They'll never get here in time. She needs help now.”

“Please stay at your current location, Mr. Vance. This phone has a GPS locater. Keep it with you.”

“What's your ETA?”

“The team will be inbound to your location shortly. They will contact you on their approach.”

He bit down on his frustration. “Is there someone I can talk to about helping her now? A healer?”

“Knight Fletcher is in the hands of God. Can the mission still be completed?”

“No.”

“Is Knight Fletcher available?”

“She's inside. I might lose the signal.”

“Try anyway please. There's a secondary amplification antennae on your vehicle. From the power of your datastream, it still functions. Keep in line of sight of your vehicle.”

He propped the building's door open and went inside, careful to keep an unobstructed view of the truck. Bailey turned her head to look at him. He'd never seen her so afraid. “They want to talk to you.”

She stared at him for a long moment, and then accepted the phone in her uninjured hand. “Bailey.”

His vampire hearing allowed him to pick up the woman's voice when she said, “Tell Vance to leave the area.”