"Cheap piece of crap," she muttered. "Guess we'll do this the old-fashioned way." She dropped the charm to the ground, took hold of her P-90, racked the slide, and aimed it at me. "Don't try anything," she warned, gaze cold and expression deadly serious. "You don't need legs for me to take you to the Nightspire and it'll only take a few well aimed rounds from my weapon to cut them off."
She looked to Devona. "And my ammo has silver blended into it, so it's effective against both your human and Bloodborn halves."
"Let me guess what happened," I said. "Orlock called to tell you we were out of action and to urge you to go after Scream Queen's voice again. But you figured you'd rather collect the reward on me, and in the bargain get back at me for stopping you at Sinsation."
"That is, unless you organized all this in the first place," Devona said.
Overkill frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"After you left Sinsation, someone cut off my head, stole my body, and somehow used it to steal a magic object called Osseal from Lord Edrigu," I explained. "I managed to get my body back, and Victor Baron made me whole, but then I was arrested and sentenced to Tenebrus for the theft – which I didn't commit."
"Orlock told me as much," Overkill said. "But you don't really think I had anything to do with it, do you? I mean, I'm not big on elaborate planning. I'm more of a shoot first and never ask questions kind of gal. And if I had an object of power like Osseal, I could sell it for a whole lot more than five hundred thousand darkgems. And then I'd just let you stay frozen down here for eternity. I almost did anyway, but since I don't have Osseal and you did piss me off at Sinsation, I figured, what the hell?"
She could have been lying, but my instincts told me she was telling the truth. But I didn't have to rely on my instincts alone.
Devona?
I don't sense any subterfuge on her part, but she could be shielding her mind from me. She's certainly strong-willed enough on her own, and she could also be using some kind of magic object to help conceal her thoughts.
So Overkill might've moved to the bottom of my suspects lists, but she wasn't officially off it yet.
"How did you manage to get past Orlock?" I asked. "He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who willingly give up something once he's collected it."
"He's not, but I have my ways." Overkill smiled grimly. "I'm carrying a magic object that temporarily traps Bloodborn in their travel forms. Right now Orlock is stuck as a dozen or so shadow rats scurrying around his bookstore, unable to put themselves back together."
I had to admit, the woman was good.
"He's not going to be too pleased with you once the spells wears off," Devona said.
"Maybe, but he's nothing if not pragmatic. Once I collect the reward on Matt, I'm going to start looking for Osseal. If I can find it and bring it to him, there's a good chance he'll forgive me for freeing you two. And if not…" She shrugged. "There are plenty of other people in the city willing to pay for my services."
"I don't suppose it matters to you that I'm innocent," I said.
"Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. Orlock seemed to think you are and he's usually right about things like that. But I don't care. Guilty or innocent, you're still worth five hundred thousand darkgems to me."
I was racking my brain, trying to come up with a way to convince Overkill to let us go or, failing that, a way that we could escape her, when Devona decided to take matters into her own hands.
She bared her fangs and hissed as she sprang toward Overkill. Devona is only half-vampire, but she's still fast as hell and she was almost on top of the mercenary before the woman could tighten her finger on the trigger of her P-90 and release a burst of gunfire. Devona managed to avoid being struck by any of the bullets, and they flew on, hitting various displays around us, taking chunks out of rare and valuable objects. Orlock would have a fit once he finally managed to pull himself together and come down here and saw the damage.
Devona wasn't fooling around. She fastened her teeth on Overkill's neck and bit down. The momentum of Devona's leap sent both women falling to the floor, and the impact caused Overkill to lose her grip on the P-90, and the strap slipped over her shoulder. The weapon skittered away from her, coming to stop over by the Frankenstein experiment display. I started toward it, doing the half-shuffle, half-run which is the fastest way I can make my dead body move.
As I went for the gun, Overkill hit Devona in the temple with a solid left cross, dislodging her teeth from Overkill's neck in a spray of blood. But Devona had a firm grip on Overkill's shoulders and she managed to hold on. Devona tried to bite Overkill again, but the mercenary brought up a forearm to block her. I saw Overkill reaching for her dire blade and I knew I had only seconds to reach the P-90. A single strike from a dire blade is fatal, as I'd demonstrated to Lycanthropus Rex in Tenebrus, and if Overkill managed to draw her blade, Devona was as good as dead.
I reached the P-90 and was bending down to pick it up when I became aware of movement. I looked at the metal framework containing the severed limbs of Dr. Frankenstein's early work and saw that every one of them had become fully animated and was thrashing about wildly. I glanced at the hand crank generator. No one had touched the crank and the machine wasn't active. No electricity was reaching the limbs, so how were they moving? What could make a bunch of dead arms and legs suddenly -
Then it hit me.
I turned to Devona and Overkill, who were still fighting on the floor. Devona had straddled the mercenary who'd managed to draw her dire blade. Devona had hold of the other woman's wrist, preventing her from using the dagger, and from the look of fury on Devona's face, I figured Overkill had only a few seconds before her wrist snapped like kindling.
"Ladies!" I shouted. Then again, louder. "Ladies!"
That time I got their attention. They stopped fighting, though Devona kept hold of Overkill's wrist. They focused their gazes on me and I pointed to the rack of thrashing limbs behind me.
"We've got a problem," I said. "I think someone just started playing Edrigu's flute."
FIFTEEN
Once Devona and Overkill stopped fighting, the mercenary applied first aid to her throat wound – a powerful anticoagulant to stop the bleeding and a patch of plaskin to seal the bite and begin the healing process. Both items were developed by the Bloodborn physicians at the Fever House, undisputed experts in treating injuries sustained during vampire attacks.
I hated to leave the others who were trapped in Orlock's stasis domes, but there wasn't time to free them all and besides, Overkill hadn't brought enough demon piss to do the job. But after what Devona and I had experienced in that bastard's virtual fishbowl, I was determined to return one day and free Orlock's prisoners, even if I had to kill the sonofabitch to do it.
The three of us then returned to Nosferatomes and walked outside, where we saw my worst fears confirmed.
Fighting had broken out in the street and not the usual sort of brawling that can happen anytime in the Sprawl. This was a serious toe -to toe, tooth-and-claw struggle for survival, complete with shouts of alarm, screams of agony, and lots of the red stuff being spilled. At first it was hard to come to any specific conclusions about the combatants because the fighting was so fast and furious, but after a couple moments it became clear that they could be broken into two separate camps: the dead and the living. A huge Frankenstein creature wearing only ragged jeans – the better to show off the jagged scars covering his obscenely muscled body – stood outside Matango, strangling a ghoul with one hand while he tore the arm off a lyke with the other. I recognized the man as Jigsaw Jones, one of the most popular professional wrestlers in the city and the sport's current champion. From the bleeding cuts on his flesh and the restaurant's shattered front window, I guessed Jones had been dining there when he'd flipped out and started killing people. I pictured him killing several of his fellow diners before leaping through the window and attacking the first people unlucky enough to be in his way.