Of Masques and Martyrs (20 page)

It made Roberto sick to think of allowing even one to escape, but he knew it was inevitable. So he pushed those thoughts aside and watched the fire, the vicious rainbow of colors that spiked through it, the flashing of exploding office windows, the black smoke that billowed up in different spots. He listened to the blaze, the roar of the fire’s voice, the explosions, the screech and crash of crumbling metal and concrete.

He gripped his HK4 Maglite automatic rifle in both hands, waiting for something to kill.

For a moment, over the roar of the fire, he didn’t hear the shouts and screams behind him. Then someone fired an HK4, and that did it. Roberto spun, weapon at the ready. A vampire lunged across the pavement toward him, its claws extended, acid saliva dripping from its distended jaws, yellow fangs gnashing.

“Bastards!” the vampire managed to snarl, despite the deformity of its mouth.

“Fuck off!” Berto snarled back and, flicking off the safety on his weapon, pulled the trigger just as the bloodsucker reached for his throat.

The thing shrieked impossibly loud as eighty silver rounds ripped it apart, scattering its parts in a shrapnel shower of blood and flesh. He’d torch its remains after, to make sure, he thought, but that fucker wouldn’t be putting itself together too soon.

“Commander!” Sniegoski shouted again.

Jimenez ran for the Humvees. He saw at least four corpses in uniform. Sniegoski was pumping silver bullets into a ragged-looking fang-boy, trying to regroup with the rest of the roadblock squad now that the element of surprise had been exhausted. Two soldiers had taken refuge inside one of the Humvees, while a pair of vampire women literally peeled back the armored doors.

“Goddamn you!” he roared.

His HK4 jumped in his hands again and one of the vamp girls was torn apart. The other took cover behind the Humvee, then turned to mist.

“Someone get a fucking flame thrower over here!” he shouted. “For Christ’s sake, what the hell did we train you all for?”

A scream. He turned, and something was flying through the air at him, spraying blood as it came. It hit him in the upper chest with great force, and Roberto went down on his ass, almost lost control of his weapon, but held on with the tips of his fingers and drew it back to him. He rolled and came up on his knees in time to fire a burst from his weapon right into the face of the vamp-girl who’d turned to mist only seconds before.

They could be anywhere. There was no way even to know if they’d killed all of them.

As he turned to see what had become of the rest of his team, Jimenez looked down to see what it was that had struck his chest before. He saw the blood splashed across his uniform. On the ground, Lieutenant Sniegoski’s face looked up at him, without a lower jaw. His head had been torn off from the mouth up.

Roberto’s gorge rose, but he forced himself not to vomit. Instead, he turned and ran for the Humvees. The two soldiers who had hidden inside one had opened the doors and were stepping out, weapons at the ready. There were two others still alive, trying to get a bead on a vampire who was stalking them.

He came to the corpse of Kathy Marshall, a major who’d already lost her father to the vampires. Roberto made a mental note to visit Major Marshall’s mother personally, even as he stripped the flame thrower from her back. It wasn’t hard. Her arms were gone.

Without even bothering to slip it on, without bothering to hide his approach, he stormed across the pavement and leaped on top of his own Humvee. The vampire that had been playing cat and mouse with Suarez and Duffy turned at the sound of Berto’s boots on the hood.

The vampire smiled, opened its mouth to speak.

Commander Jimenez didn’t want to hear it. He strafed the monster with the flame thrower, even as the others opened fire with silverpoints. The vampire didn’t stand a chance.

Roberto walked from place to place, incinerating the remains of the vampires that were there. When he was through, he tapped the commlink on his blood spattered uniform.

“This is Commander Jimenez, all units Alpha through Omega, check in now, please.”

He waited until he’d heard from all of them. No other attacks so far. But he warned them to be on guard for an attack from behind.

“The bloodsuckers are all pissed off that we’ve spoiled their party,” he said, in his anger abandoning his usual attention to military propriety.

“Chapin! Delacruz!” he snapped.

The two soldiers who’d hidden inside the Humvee scrambled to attention. He stared at them, but neither man would meet his gaze.

“I should have you two cowards fucking court-martialed,” he growled.

The two soldiers shifted uncomfortably.

“Shouldn’t I?”

“Yes, Commander!” they both snapped back.

“But I won’t,” he said.

He saw them visibly relax at his words. Which only angered him more. Roberto moved closer, stared eye to eye with each man, walked around behind them, stood between them, and whispered so that the other survivors, Suarez and Duffy, couldn’t hear him.

“If I ever see anything like that again, if you leave another soldier to the enemy during a battle, I’ll kill you myself,” he said softly. “I promise I will.”

 

A cool wind, almost chilly, breezed lightly through the trees beyond the fence that surrounded the modest airport in White Plains, New York. Two fat crows and a bat flew together, an unlikely trio, while a third bird, a bluejay, followed behind. The crows and the bat fluttered to the ground and, a second later, began to change, to take on their human forms.

Will Cody watched as Erika and Sebastiano changed, and he wondered if he could trust either of them. Sebastiano especially. He’d only met the other shadow once or twice before, in the days before Peter’s return. In the days before Sebastiano had betrayed Rolf, and all the rest of them, to follow Hannibal. And unlike Erika’s claims about her own seeming betrayal, Sebastiano admitted his treason.

On the other hand, their story seemed to check out. The only reason Will had gotten in and out of Sing-Sing so easily was because the burning of Atlanta had forced Hannibal to speed up his plans. Hannibal had the bait ready for him, but by the time Cody got there, there was no longer any hook. Hannibal’s entire clan was on the move, and Cody had taken advantage of that confusion.

So their story checked out. Didn’t mean he trusted them.

But as Sebastiano completed his change, the intentionally aged shadow looked up at Will, then quite purposefully looked away. If anything weighed on his conscience, he might have tried to present a false enthusiasm, or been inclined to turn away more quickly to hide his guilty feelings. Will read Sebastiano’s attitude, right down to the way he carried himself, as an expression of shame.

He hoped he was right.

Erika was a different story. With her, he just had to go on faith. In her, in his own judgment, and in Rolf’s instincts and taste in women. Will wanted to believe Erika, so he did. But he’d be watching her closely just the same.

Sebastiano and Erika glided forward and stood staring through the fence at the airport runways on the other side. Even as they watched, a small passenger plane was coming in, its engine the only sound but for the wind in the trees and the occasional nightbird. Will glanced at it, and allowed himself a moment to appreciate the majesty of human flight. To get something of that size off the ground . . . hell, that was a miracle in itself.

There was a quick fluttering above and behind him, and Will turned to watch the bluejay land on the dirt and scrub grass of the small forested area. He watched as the bird—as Allison—shuffled back and forth on the ground a moment, waiting for newborn instincts to direct her next action. And suddenly Will felt sick.

His stomach churned with acid and he felt as though his chest was pressing in, squeezing his heart. Will felt his lip begin to curl in anger, but he forced a smile onto his face as Allison returned to her self. The bluejay was gone, and before him stood the woman he’d loved like no other.

“Oh, man,” she whispered, overwhelmed by the transformation. “That’s . . . incredible. Where does the mass go? The rest of the matter? I mean, I was a bluejay! Where did the rest of me go?”

“Nobody’s ever answered that one, far as I know,” Will replied.

He glanced over his shoulder, remaining constantly aware of Erika and Sebastiano’s location. It wouldn’t do to lose track of them.

“That was . . .” she said, and then her smile went away. She was remembering, he knew. Remembering how she got this way. No matter how incredible or even wonderful she might consider the power of the shadows, that wonder would always be tainted by the memory of the suffering and indignity it had cost her.

Will’s smile disappeared as well. He allowed his true feelings to appear for the first time since they’d been reunited. After his initial reaction, he’d done his best to stay “up.” To comfort her without allowing his own fury to surface. More than fury—his own despair.

Now he let her see. Almost showed it to her, as if he wanted her to know, though he was aware it would only upset Allison more. But Will couldn’t help it. She’d been his joy, his hope for the future and for his own tenuous grasp on humanity; now she was his greatest wound, the source of damning hatred and crippling despair.

If he didn’t fight it. If he let it happen.

Will promised himself he was going to fight. Not against his rage, but against making what had happened to Allison more important to him than she was herself, than their relationship was.

With the moonlight slipping through the trees above, Allison reached out for his hand. At first, Will couldn’t go to her. He was still trying to push himself away from the emotional abyss that had so tempted him. But if he went over the edge, he wouldn’t be there for Allison, and she sorely needed him. This had happened to her, not to him.

“At least now we’ll never be apart,” she said softly. “I don’t have to be paranoid about you leaving me for a younger woman when I get old.”

He stared at her, stunned that she could laugh about it. Then he saw her eyes, saw behind her words, and realized that she might joke, but she wouldn’t laugh. And he knew, from the way she gazed at him, that Allison understood exactly what was going through his mind. His fury and his fear.

Will pulled her close and held her tight and wept into her hair. “Oh, Alli,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

She kissed his tears, tasting the blood there, and held him away from her.

“We’ve got forever to be sorry,” she said. “For now, let’s just find the son of a bitch and make him pay.”

Will wanted to smile, but Allison didn’t and so he only looked away. He knew he was thinking too much about his own vengeance and not enough about hers. If anything, it should be hers, or even theirs. He would try to remind himself of that often.

“Cody, over here,” Sebastiano whispered, but did not turn. Instead, he continued to stare out across the runways toward the airport.

Will and Allison joined Erika and Sebastiano at the fence a moment later. She squeezed his hand, and he took a breath and held it to keep back the tide of emotion that threatened to flow over him again.

“You’ve found something?” he asked.

“There,” Erika said, her finger pointing through an opening in the chain link fence.

Will looked in the direction Erika indicated, and saw a DC-10 parked at one of the long gangways that extended from the small airport terminal. There were vehicles surrounding it, one obviously a tanker from which the airplane’s fuel was being replenished. Others were baggage carriers, being loaded even as they watched with suitcases from the plane’s most recent journey.

“It taxied in just now,” Erika explained. “The passengers are probably still getting off, but they’re refueling in a hurry. They’ll probably start boarding for their next trip in five or ten minutes.”

“That’s it, then,” Will said. “Let’s move.”

One by one, the four shadows misted through the chain link fence, re-forming on the other side. Swift as night falling, they swept across the tarmac and descended upon the ground crew like wolves. This was the part of the plan that Will had hated, but he couldn’t see any alternative.

“Just don’t kill anyone,” he snarled, and grabbed the hair and shirtfront of a baggage handler.

The man screamed an alarm, and Will slapped him hard on the side of the head—hard enough to disorient him momentarily. Then his fangs sank into the soft flesh of the man’s throat, the stubble under his lips unfamiliar and faintly repulsive. It had been a long time since he’d taken the blood of an unwilling donor, even longer since he’d drunk the blood of a man.

The others were doing the same. Drinking, not killing. Feeding, for none of them knew when they would have a moment’s respite again. But even now the screams of their victims were bringing others. Footsteps pounded down the metal stairs that extended from the airport gate. In a moment, more humans would arrive.

“Enough!” Will shouted.

Whatever their true loyalties, the others obeyed. They misted at once, their unfortunate victims crumpling to the tarmac weak or unconscious, throats bloodied, but alive. They ought to be grateful for that, Will thought. But the fact that the man with the beard stubble would live didn’t make what Will had done any less wrong.

As he floated in a small, thin fog up and through the door of the plane, Will Cody couldn’t help but wonder how much further he would have to fall, how many things he had come to believe sacred he would have to abandon, in order to destroy Hannibal.

Returning to his own, familiar human body on board the airplane, he watched Allison take flesh once more and decided he didn’t care. Whatever it took to take Hannibal down, it would be worth it.

Once aboard the plane, Sebastiano closed the door and locked it down. Outside, people screamed in horror and alarm. Will ignored it all. He strode into the cockpit and startled a uniformed man who had been making notations on a clipboard.