AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I adjusted my grip on the gun, making sure my hands weren’t too sweaty, then did a final mental check of where all my weapons were placed. I paused and unzipped the pouch where the grenade and spare clips were stored. If I needed something, I didn’t want to be fumbling with zippers in the heat of the moment.
I mean, unless we were talking sexy heat of the moment, and zippers on pants. But that was a different story, and my husband’s pants were with him in upstate New York.
Mmm. Husband sexy times.
Okay, kill a den of vampires, then go home and mercilessly bone my man. Sounded like a good tradeoff to me.
My nose tickled under the bandana, and now that I was out of reach of all the rotting bodies, I figured I could probably take it off.
I took the downward cave, navigating with cautious, silent steps. Any loose rocks or gravel underfoot might sound my arrival before I wanted to. This time of day they should all be dead to the world—literally—but I’d seen some insane things in my time, and if this vampire “god” could convince legions to die for him, he had to have some pretty impressive skills. If he was old enough, he might be able to stay awake during the day. Sig, the two-thousand-year-old vampire who I’d served with on the Tribunal, could do a lot of really unnerving shit. He used to be able to control me, something I was glad to be free of now that I was no longer a vampire.
Old vampires were creepy motherfuckers.
As I descended, the air got colder but drier. The darkness swallowed me up, so the only light to guide me was the narrow shaft from my gun-mounted flashlight, and that barely did anything to help. After about five minutes of constant decline, the ground leveled out a bit, and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, there was an actual light at the end of the tunnel.
And someone was chanting.
I lowered the gun, straining to hear, but I wasn’t imagining it. Someone was definitely chanting. It was a quiet, constant sound, but I could make out words, and much to my astonishment they were in English. I’d expected Latin—number one cult leader chanting language of choice—or Spanish since we were, you know, in Bolivia. English was a bit of a surprise.
Uh, there was no way that many vampires should be awake in the daylight, let alone making coherent sentences. I strained to better hear what they were saying.
“Kneel. Bow before your lord. If you give blood to me, I will give you life eternal, for I am god, and I can bestow the gift of immortality or snuff life out with a whim.”
Okay, so, if it was big-daddy vampire talking, this whole spiel wasn’t exactly horse manure. He could grant life immortal for the cost of some blood swapping, but that sure as shit didn’t make him a god.
A choir of voices responded, “You are our lord. Our blood is your blood. Your blood is our blood.” They’d clearly said these lines hundreds of times. They repeated them over and over. Our blood is your blood, your blood is our blood.
Ugh, fuck this guy.
I shut off the gun’s light, not needing it with the flickering glow at the end of the tunnel. No sense in announcing my presence before I had a chance to take them by surprise. I edged closer, keeping my back against the cool rock wall. In the past I’d have been able to g
et some sense of numbers before even seeing them, but the good ol’ days were done. Now I’d need to actually get a look at them to know how bad my one-against-many odds were.
The end of the tunnel greeted me a bit too soon, and before I knew it I was looking into a huge cavern lit by hundred of candles and torches on the walls. Wonder which of the grunts got stuck with that job.
A makeshift altar had been erected at the far end of the cavern, and a man in long black robes was standing on it, holding a goddamn severed head in his hands. I counted fifteen vampires kneeling on the ground in front of him, and he passed between them, holding the head over them and letting the blood drip into their waiting mouths.
“Say it again.”
“Our blood is your blood. Your blood is our blood,” they chanted.
I was doing some mental math while the black-robed vampire fed his disciples. I had three thirty-round clips for the AR-15. The Sig had a full clip, plus a spare, giving me another thirty bullets there. That should be more than enough silver ammo to take out the baby vamps, provided I could get off decent headshots before they retaliated. If I was quick—and they were sluggish from being awake during the day—I could kill at least ten of them before I needed to change a round.
Big Papa would be tougher.
Not only was he awake in the middle of the day, he’d managed to keep his whole flock conscious as well. That was some serious power. He’d be fast, and he’d be strong, and I really doubted my trigger finger was going to do me much good against him.
I had the knife, and I had the machete.
I took another look at the amassed group. The baby vamps were all men, most in their twenties or early thirties from what I could tell. They were still tan and human-looking, like they’d just wandered into the cave from a hard day of farming. The head vampire, though, was as pale as paper, his skin almost clear. He had dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and his fangs were already exposed as he watched the blood dribble from the head.
I had no idea who he was, but we were standing in his grave.
Five
The first bullet caused something of a paradox. The shot rang out so loud it echoed in the chamber, but it created a perfect silence in its wake.
I stood in the entrance of the cavern, feet planted firmly and the AR-15 pressed to my shoulder, my eye lined up with the sight.
