“Coffee anywhere?” Eli asked, opening his door and stepping to the pavement.
“The cafeteria has a coffee bar this month. Something new they’re trying to beat back the competition. It’s not real coffee—you know. the burnt sludge from the bottom of the pot after it’s been sitting all day—but it isn’t bad. It’s horribly fresh, with all sorts of icky flavorings. And the espresso is made while you wait.”
“I’ll buy you some of this horrible coffee,” Eli said.
Sylvia laughed, and I figured all was okay now with their weird relationship. “The doc’s all excited about the vamps’ external characteristics. He can’t wait to get them open.”
“Get them—” Eli grabbed her arm. “You did take their heads already.” At her wide eyes he added, “Hell. You didn’t get my text. Did you?” Sylvia shook her head. “There’s a good chance the new-style vamps will rise as revenants unless you take their heads.”
I heard a beepbeepbeep. The sheriff went from dead stop to a sprint in a half second, pulling her police radio. She shouted back to us, “That’s man down! We got trouble in the morgue!” She shouted into the radio as we dashed down the sidewalk, “Take their heads! It’s the only way to kill them!” Over the radio, we heard gunshots and screaming.
No one stopped us as we entered a side door that had been propped open with a pencil. Sylvia kicked the pencil out of the way and we raced down a hallway as the door closed behind us, took a right down another hall, and flew down a short flight of stairs. We heard muffled screams and more gunshots. Sylvia rammed open the door at the bottom while drawing her service weapon. I reached up and pulled the M4, adjusted the vamp-killer on my left hip, and let out some of Beast as we ran. Her strength and speed flowed into me like a drug, and I laughed shortly, showing my teeth.
We spun around a corner and stopped. Two cops were lying in a pool of blood, service revolvers out, throats torn away.
And the first thing landed on Sylvia.
CHAPTER 18
The Bad Men Are Gone
Eli let out a war scream and jumped in front. Stupid man. I nearly shot him. Instead, I adjusted my aim, braced the M4, and fired point-blank at the next thing. They were spidey vamps all right, but next-gen spidey vamps. Faster than lightning and nearly as deadly. The one I shot took the blast midcenter and didn’t even pause except to change direction by shoving off Eli’s back and leaping at me. I fired two shots in rapid sequence. Not gonna get chewed on twice.
The spidey vamp landed on me, gasping, and I let her slide down me to the floor. I put the shotgun to her head and fired. She stopped moving, so I pulled the vamp-killer and took her head. Eli was lifting Sylvia to her feet. She was covered in gore, and my heart fell. “How much of that is yours?” I asked.
“None,” she said, and smiled at Eli.
Young love is so cute, I thought. And then realized I’d said it aloud. I shook myself and jogged away from them toward the sound of screams.
Most morgues these days don’t use the pull-out, refrigerated, coffin-sized beds, except for new arrivals or bodies still being processed. (That’s what they call it. Processed. Not slicing and dicing, measuring and scooping.) Most modern morgues use a cold room—a walk-in refrigerator where they can store bodies one of two ways: stack them on bunk-style ledges that look like prison beds, but without the charm or the pretense of a mattress, or on roll-in gurneys. In the autopsy suite, I stepped over the body on the floor. Someone had taken the liberty of beheading a spidey vamp, second gen. He was naked and had a hard carapace, like a spider’s, over his chest—or, rather, it was part of his chest. The carapace was brown and covered with coarse hairs, spiked and barbed. If he had ever been human, he’d lost it totally.
Farther in the room was another one, still alive, her head only half removed. She was sitting on top of a human, her face buried in his belly, slurping. For creatures who had a rep for physical speed, their mental abilities were more along the lines of brain-dead. I reared back with the vamp-killer and yelled, “Hey, fanghead!” The vamp looked up and focused on me. Multifaceted eyes bulged from her face. Fly eyes. I hurled my arm forward with all my strength behind it.
Though I cut with anger rather than skill, I took her head, the blow sending it spinning, and I could have sworn she stared at me the whole time, until her head whapped into the wall. At my feet, her body was reaching for me. I kicked it away from the human beneath. It was the pathologist, and he was way too dead for any help.
Reaching for the handle of the cold room, I had a moment’s memory of the building today with the refrigerator and the white witch circle painted on the floor. This fridge was empty of witch circles, but the moment I opened the door, I was charged by more vamp things. I caught half a breath, pulling the M4 into firing position as they flowed across the space like centipedes, a swirling yet jerky motion. The musk they exuded was dry and ammoniac, and they moved so fast I had only an instant of impression before the first one was on me. Naked, every one, and insectoid. Ick.
The first one latched on to the barrel of the shotgun as if she intended to use it as a straw. Taking her head was easy, and had the added benefit of peppering the vamps behind her with silver fléchettes. It didn’t kill them, but it made three of them jump back. I put a hole in the two still moving forward and slammed the door shut. I had counted only four rounds, but the shotgun was empty and I broke open the M4 to reload from my handy-dandy shell holder. I could hear the creatures screaming inside, even over the concussive eardrum damage from the shotgun. They might not look like vamps, but they had the vamp death scream down pat.
To the others, who had gathered close, I said, “I count five,” like it was a game we were playing or something.
Eli removed a metal shim from his go-bag and rammed it under the latching mechanism, effectively sealing them in, and the ease of it had me laughing. “That’s the easiest vamp trap I ever saw.”
He gave me that little no-smile of humor. “After the last time we were in Natchez, I started carrying extra equipment. Let’s clear this place and come back,” he added to Syl.
“Yeah.” I loaded the six additional rounds fast, and moved out behind the happy, courting couple.
There was only one revenant vamp still loose, and he was chewing on a dead security guard. Eli took the vamp’s head with his vamp-killer, a silver-plated machete. He used it like he’d had plenty of practice, and made me wonder about the scars on his chest and neck and face. Not that I’d ask. But I did wonder. And I wondered what he’d tell Sylvia, if anything. The cause of his wounds was classified, so it wasn’t likely.
The guard was propped against a locked door, an empty can of mace in his lap. “Yeah,” I said. “Mace is gonna do a lot of good. It might make the vamp’s sense of smell less acute, but it won’t stop a brainless killing machine.”
We turned away, but I heard a whimper and grabbed Eli’s arm. “What?” he asked. I paused, releasing his arm so he would have full range of motion. He stepped behind me, pushing Sylvia nearer me and protecting the womenfolk, the idiot man, but still covering my back, as Sylvia and I studied the hallway. And this time we all heard it: a whimper. Coming from the guard. “No way,” Syl said.
I saw a sliver of bloody cloth that had once been white sticking out from under the guard’s blood-soaked navy pants. “Crap,” I whispered. Silently, I stepped back and bent my knees, wedging my hands under his flaccid arms and standing, pulling him away from the corner. A little girl was curled into a ball behind his body, eyes closed tightly, a thumb in her mouth. Whimpering softly with each breath, a rhythmic moan of fear. I dropped the guard to the side and lifted the girl in my arms. “It’s all right, sweetie,” I murmured. “The bad men are gone.” I stepped over the guard, mentally saluting him, cradling the child. She was dark-haired with death-pale skin and a heartbeat I could hear, racing and bouncing. “It’s all right, sweetie,” I repeated. “The bad men are gone.”