Ghost Soldiers (40 page)

The incendiary grenade went off. Fire, so bright Karl had to throw up an arm to protect his eyes, ripped outward in every direction as the accelerants ignited. A wall of flames broke over the right flank of Cojocaru's army, man and monster both. The fire drew back, leaving offspring in the form of a thousand searing tongues of flame, burning flesh and fur and hair, melting eyes, scorching flesh, and then the world exploded with a bass
WHUMP
and a shock wave that shattered through Xiesha's shield and slammed him to his knees. Jagged splinters of wood as long as his forearm hissed through the air, and all the scrap metal they'd piled around the pallets turned to shrapnel and cut into concrete and bodies with the same zealous whisper.

Fire spread everywhere, with an eagerness no sentient creature could watch and not dread. The asphalt burned. The fire leapt to the roof of the warehouse on the side of the avenue where they'd hidden the propane tanks. A huge hole gaped in the cinderblock. Smoke billowed out, making it hard to see, even as running bodies were silhouetted against the flames. Everything around them shimmered red, orange and yellow, and the smoke shone with a furious glow of firelight. The air stank of propane, of burning oil and charred flesh, of scorched metal and fear.

Karl staggered back to his feet. Xiesha had sprawled on her side, but she already had one arm under her and reached for her shotgun again. Bailey was on her knees, staring with fascinated horror at the demon she'd unleashed to burn the world. A nine-inch piece of lead pipe stuck out of Maria's left thigh. Dark vampire blood glistened along its length. A few drops fell to the ground and disintegrated into smoke, instantly lost in the thicker black and gray cloud of smoke growing around them. He ran toward her, his thoughts fragmenting to shards of fear.

Maria saw him coming and gave a sickly smile. “Just metal.” She seized the shrapnel and wrenched it out of her thigh, and then flung it toward the inferno raging fifty or so feet distant. The wound immediately started to heal.

Another explosion ripped through the night—to the east this time where he'd stationed Tyrell and his wolves. Gunfire rattled from that direction, intermixed with howling and snarling.

“My shield's down for good,” Xiesha yelled. She blasted a burning figure charging toward them across the intersection, its long tongue licking at its sockets as its eyes melted in its head. The shadowling collapsed in a fiery heap when the solid slug ripped through its head and ended its misery.

The Thorn knights had scrambled back behind cover. He could barely see them through the smoke and firelight. One knight dragged a comrade by the top of his body armor. The wounded man's face was a hamburger mess of charred flesh and seeping blood. Half his helmet had melted, and smoke rose from his armor and uniform. Another knight lay on his back near the fires. Part of his armor had been blown apart, and a huge hole gaped in his upper chest. Not shrapnel damage—some kind of spell construct from one of the acolytes. Lady MacKenzie screamed orders into her headset that Karl couldn't hear over the roaring flames and the ringing in his ears. The knights stacked up against the cinderblock wall out of the blazing heat, bristling with weapons and menace. The air was rent with the rhythmic thump of helicopter rotors, and a sudden downdraft whipped the flames in all directions. A black helicopter hovered over the knights. Ropes dropped from it, and more Thorn soldiers rappelled out to the roof.

Twisted wreckage, bodies, blood and body parts lay scattered all across the avenue, beyond the intersection, where Cojocaru's people had been before the explosions. The air was thick with the stink of blood and smoke and burning flesh. One of the Nassid dragged itself along the scorched cement, fire eating into its back, both legs missing from the knees down. It mewled and gibbered as its comrades ran from the flames. Karl leveled the SIG and stopped its pain with a bullet.

“Fall back!” he yelled. His ears rang so badly he could hardly hear himself, and the chop of the helicopter's rotor blades tried to swallow the sound of his words. He got an arm around Maria and helped her up. She limped, still clutching the BAR in one hand. “Fall back to the warehouse!”

Xiesha hurried past him toward the bay door, sweeping right to left with her shotgun, but Bailey held her ground.

“Motherfuckers!” Bailey screamed so loud her voice cracked. “Mother
fuckers
!” She cut loose with both shotgun barrels into the smoke and fire. No way to tell if she hit anything. Bullets whined and ricocheted off the ground and wall near her—the Thorn knights walking their fire in. Bailey threw herself backward, landed cat-nimble and sprinted away, her white coat billowing out behind her as she ran under the bay door.

The last glimpse Karl had of Lady MacKenzie was of her surrounded by knights as they poured suppressing fire in all directions. Thorn knights on the roof threw down ropes to their comrades on the ground. MacKenzie's troops began to scale the building. He looked up at the black helicopter with no markings, seeing muzzle flashes through the haze of smoke.

Sirens screamed. He noticed them for the first time, but it seemed as if he'd heard them for a good hour already. A bullet spun past him, close enough to hear the greedy whine. He hurried Maria along, and a few lurching steps later she was running beside him, heavily favoring her uninjured leg.

Another explosion rocked the night. A shock wave of magical energy pulsed off to the east, out of his line of sight. Maybe one of Xiesha's trap spells detonating. Maybe not.

They ran through the bay door. He let Maria go and turned back, kneeling, his pistol in both hands as he searched for targets. The helicopter hovered low above the building where the Thorn knights had fought, its chassis painted orange by the fire. He saw dark figures hauling in bodies. Then the helicopter lifted off, nose tilted down, and wheeled off to the east toward the open ocean. He didn't know if all the Thorn knights had evacuated or if they'd left behind a team to finish the job, but he wasn't about to take any chances.

The bay door dropped closed, cutting down on the roar and tumult. Xiesha leaned against the wall, and the swinging pull-chains rattled and clinked. Her eyes were closed and exhaustion strained her face. Bailey squatted near the opposite wall, broke open the shotgun and flung aside the empty red shells. They bounced along the concrete with a cheery plastic clatter. She grabbed two more and reloaded, her eyes burning red like the fires eating the world outside. Her spirit wolf crouched beside her, ears back, voicing a low and ominous growl. Maria stood near him with her hand tight on his shoulder as if she didn't want him out of reach. She gave him a tired, worried smile.

His cell phone rang, and he opened it quickly. “Vance.”

“The goddamn
world's
burning.” Tyrell's voice was so loud the phone's speaker crackled in protest. “We're the fuck out of here. Good fucking luck!”

“Did you see Cojocaru? Is he still alive?”

“I saw a shitload of his guys running away from the fire. A damn good idea if you ask me—”

“What direction? Any of them Cojocaru?”

“Thought he was headed toward you, but I couldn't fucking
see
anything with the world blowing up. We were ripping shit up with some shadowlings he sent to flank you. Something exploded. Then I blew the fuck out of our trap and we ran like hell.” He was breathing so hard he panted into the phone. “I lost Chris. I paid those cocksuckin' motherfuckers back, though.” Wild laughter.

“Meet us at the warehouse.” Karl glanced at Maria. “We're bugging out.”

“We're already the fuck outta there. Cops are everywhere. Cop helicopters. SWAT guys. Only way out is east along the docks. Your spikes and fake bomb fucked up their plans.” He laughed again before the sound wrenched and choked off. “You fucking
owe
me.”

Karl shoved the phone back into his pocket. Tendrils of smoke curled along the rafters. The roof of their warehouse had already caught fire. The building shuddered and the metal groaned. Not much time. “Let's go.”

A voice called from the shadows behind them. “We have something to discuss, vampire.”

Karl spun around, lifting the SIG-Sauer. Vampire hunter Erik Deor stood at the base of the iron stairwell, leaning against the railing, his face a chiaroscuro of shadow and firelight seeping through the windows along the roof. Deor pushed off the railing and flung back his cobalt cloak. The holy symbols on his armor and neck guard flared with brilliant blue-white light. Xiesha swung her shotgun up and leveled it at the vampire hunter, but Deor already had a derringer in each hand, aimed at Bailey and Maria.

“Another move, kyveryn,” Deor said, “and I put silver in their eye sockets. I swear it before all that's holy.”

Karl kept his gun aimed at Deor's head. “I don't like threats against my people, hunter. Your friends have already retreated. You should go. Otherwise, you've come a long way to die.”

“I've come a long way to finish a job,” Deor said. “Killing vampires is no longer a challenge for me.”

“Try me instead.” Xiesha grinned.

Deor looked at her…and then the metal door at the side of the warehouse wrenched off its frame with a grinding shriek and went flying into the night. A ghoul crawled through the doorway on all fours, thick ropes of saliva dripping from its mouth where his cheeks had been flayed back. His naked torso and left arm were burned a mottled pink and black, red and white. One of Cojocaru's acolytes followed the ghoul, his hands lifted and a steady pulse of drawn energy rippling from his shield. Half his hair had burned away. His reddish-blond beard was singed, his skin shiny red all around his face and down to the slave collar, and even though one of his eyes twitched and watered continually, he didn't drop his spellcasting.

Cojocaru came last, striding through the doorway with his hands clasped behind his back, a scowl on his severe face. No burns marred him. His military dress uniform wasn't even singed. He stopped and scanned the warehouse. When his gaze fell on Karl, he smiled. “Oh wayward soldier. That it should come to this.”

The light from the fires made the shadows jump and writhe along the walls and floor. The roof groaned again, and the few unbroken windows along the rafters shattered and rained down glass. More sirens wailed in the distance. A helicopter circled low and then swung off again.

Karl didn't smile. “I've been looking for you.”

 

So fucking close. Maria knew they'd been so fucking
close
to getting out of here in one piece. Her leg didn't even hurt anymore where the chunk of pipe had shoved itself through her thigh muscles. Hell, she suspected it had cracked the bone, but since it wasn't silver or some kind of spell-enhanced weapon, she'd healed right through it. But now…

Now she had a vampire hunter on her left, an insane sorcerer on her right. And Cojocaru
had
to be insane. Why else would he keep coming, so goddamn relentless, even after they'd blown the shit out of his army and killed his cat?

She aimed the BAR, but not at Cojocaru, putting the sights on his acolyte instead. Kill the mages first, and the guy had some kind of shield going. Let Xie cover the vamp hunter. The blaze from the holy symbols—the unrelenting shine of them—made it hard to aim, made her feel inhuman, made her fangs burn and her skin crawl and seared her shadow to the floor.

Cojocaru's mouth twitched into something closer to a snarl than a smile. “I've come to withdraw my offer, since you continually kick it back in my teeth.” He glanced at Maria, then at Bailey, his hands still clasped behind his back. “There are other vampires. Other converts.” He turned to stare out the broken windows lining the high ceiling where smoke poured in billowing columns of black. “And I've decided this city might suit my needs more readily than anything in Old Europe.”

A helicopter swooped low overhead, and Maria saw a bright column of light pierce down from a searchlight. Memories of the battle with Delgado in the burning mansion filled her mind. The air even smelled the same. Life and unlife seemed one big circle. No matter what cards she played, she always ended up surrounded by fire and death. It was pretty fucking depressing actually.

Deor shifted both of his derringers to Cojocaru. “The vampires are mine to destroy, sorcerer.”

“A Thorn maggot.” Cojocaru sneered. “This doesn't concern you. Crawl away or die. I have a nation to build, and I'll set the cornerstone here. Tonight.”

“Hate to tell you this,” Maria said. “But this is
my
town. Set your cornerstone here and I'll shove every charred piece down your fucking throat.”

Cojocaru stared at her, unmoving. “In the end, everything burns, dark one. Even dreams.”

The building shook again. A section of roof nearest the bay doors collapsed with a tortured shriek and a shower of burning debris. The ghoul flinched away, crouched low, and licked at the blisters on its arm. No one else moved. The air was hazy, filling with smoke as the fire spread, and heat blazed down from the rafters and from the cinderblock walls. The acolyte began to cough. Soon she wouldn't be able to see well. They had to get the hell out of here.

Deor spoke. “I suggest a test, in the tradition of the Old Ways. A three-way duel. Vampire. Thorn. Invidi. Let God choose the victor.”

“No,” Karl said, and pulled the trigger.

Chapter Forty-Two: Blaze

The SIG kicked in his hand, muzzle flash, the slide came back, the bright shell casing leaping out the side. A hole appeared in the ghoul's forehead and the back of his head sprayed out in a gout of blood, brains and bone.

Even as the ghoul fell, Karl shifted his pistol to his next target. Maria opened fire with the Browning, the rifle shots cracking like lightning in the air. Sparks flew from the acolyte's shield as the rounds hit. The acolyte's eyes grew wild, filling with fear, as he strained to keep the shield up.