A Bloody Deal, page 27
Biting her cheek, Grace turned toward him, her hand reaching to the bolt cutters in her pocket. So many men telling her what to do. Perry, Diavolo, the vet, and now this sad excuse for a soldier. All of them relegating her to the background. Well, this was her story. And no one was going to shut her out of it.
“Your middle name,” Grace declared, “is Louise. After our grandmother. You wanted to be a scientist when you grew up.”
“Shut up.” Beluga held up a finger. May as well have been a green light.
“Dad taught us how to fix things around the house. Because we shouldn't depend on anyone, even him.”
Lightning quick, Beluga seized Grace’s arm in a vice. “I said shut up!” His stump hit her cheek, sending her flying but she caught. He'd held on. Her arm almost tore free of its socket. Finally, she angled the bolt cutters up. One last distraction.
“The fan! We fixed–” The pop as her index finger broke made her wince. Beluga used that split second to slowly–impossibly–rip the cutters free of her.
Then he turned them back around. She tried to dodge but it was no use. The cutters closed around her middle finger.
Not like this! Grace clawed at his face with her free hand, fingernails digging into his eyes, but it was like trying to bend a rock in half.
“The fan.”
The cutters bit into her flesh, enough to draw blood and no more. “What?” Beluga hissed through his teeth.
“We fixed the fan,” Joy's voice was tiny, unsure.
“Yes, Joy,” Grace said, equally uncertain, not wanting to break this spell. “We did.”
“And you…”
“Yes.”
“That video.”
The tears she tried holding back finally fell. “Yes, Joy. I showed you…that video. I’m so sorry.”
Joy said nothing. Beluga looked from her to Grace, eyebrows higher than they’d ever gone before. That fucking video. Why had she done that? She was a teenager and a moron, that was why. But did she have to pay for her stupidity the rest of her life?
“Grace,” Joy said. “Your name is Grace.”
The lightness in Grace’s chest brought the tiniest giggle with it. “Yes.”
And there it was: a future. A place where she and her sister could exist beyond here, live without the constant stress of everything, just be. Sisters once again; messy, but a mess of their own making. Beyond the years and the scars.
“Well, then,” Beluga said, voice guttural and resonant. “What an answer.”
The cutters closed on her finger and red drowned her perfect picture. Beluga shoved her by the throat against the wall and pressed. Her air cut off. But only for a moment. As soon as it started, his hold loosened. It was Joy. She bit into him, sprouting fangs shredding through the flesh of his calf. He raised a fist, hesitated, then muttered, “Joy. Execute code: Phantasma.”
Joy shrank back and froze, eyes blank.
“What a waste.” Beluga tsked. His rank breath made Grace’s eyes water. “Where was I? Oh, right.”
A second finger followed. Through the pain she managed to force out Joy’s name. It was like calling a mannequin.
Beluga took hold of Grace's thumb. No, she wanted to scream. No more! He was just a little twerp with a magnifying glass. Well, she was no fucking ant. He wanted to break her? Then he better try harder.
She reached with her free hand and slathered it in the red streaming down her mangled arm. See how you like this. Slick with blood, she rammed her fingers into his open eyes.
Beluga howled and dropped her. Her damaged hand burned as it struck the floor, the very air like acid in her veins. But there was no time to rest, she had to press what small advantage she had. The bolt cutters had clattered to the floor in the confusion. They proved elusive, the blood making her grip as slick as oil.
Maybe this should be it. Poetic justice. The answer she'd devoted her life to ended up costing her that very thing. What else was there?
Everything.
Grace didn't want this. She wanted to live. Her life had little, practically nothing. She may have nothing to live for, but she wanted to live long enough to have something to live for. To be a person.
There was only one thing stopping her. She clutched the slippery bolt cutters.
Beluga raged, the center of chaos. Her resolve sharpened to a point. She pounced. The bolt cutters went true, straight into Beluga’s left eye.
He screamed and batted her aside. She struck the wall again, the wind knocked from her lungs. Sucking in took all her strength and weakened her at the same time. But she was still conscious. His mistake.
She wrenched a syringe from her pocket, stolen from the lab below. Beluga’s convulsions ebbed as his enhanced healing kicked in. If he recovered, he’d kill her. Or worse, Joy. Snap her sister’s neck in front of her just because he could. Because he faced the possibility of loss.
Francesco created a villain, but Beluga embodied it. A man who would kill for pleasure, who bet on and tortured others for shits and giggles. This was the real Diavolo.
Mustering everything, Grace brought the syringe up as close to Beluga as she could.
“There’s…” Grace growled, her lungs punishing for every word she choked out, for the truth—and lone God—she now accepted “There’s no running from God.”
Beluga turned his head like a whip. If he’d still had his human speed, he might have avoided what came next. But with his enhanced abilities, he snapped around so fast, the syringe entered his left temple without the slightest resistance. The needle went through his punctured eye, forming a cross with the bolt cutters.
His head erupted in flame.
The sergeant first class squealed. He attempted to tear the instruments from his skull, pulling until his fingers melted. The holy fire consumed his motor controls, senses, and nerve center. Viscous fluid pored out of every orifice as his yowling morphed into mewling whimpers then finally cut off.
In no time at all, the charred stump of Beluga fell to the floor with an ashen sigh.
Dr. Schneider backed away. “What…what…” She repeated again and again. She wrapped an arm around Joy in a protective gesture but the other hand held a taser. Guess the good doctor wasn’t so trusting of her patients. Joy stared on, wide eyed and oblivious.
Grace raised a hand to shoo Schneider away and fell to her knees. Breathing pained her. The smoke from the fire sapped her. Even in death, Beluga held her back, stealing her last chance—the chance she earned— to rescue her sister. But she refused to let him win. She wrenched the bolt cutters from Beluga's charred head with a squelching sound and dragged herself forward.
Dr. Schneider pulled Joy away, inching closer to a red button on the wall. “You-you don’t understand. This facility has cured numerous diseases. The world is better for the work we do. If it ends, humanity goes back into the dark ages. Sickness, genetic mutations. How would you like the average life expectancy to dive into the mid-70’s? It would be godless barbarism.”
“Jo…Joy…” was all Grace got out between wracking coughs. She was going to lose her sister again. And this time, it really would be her fault.
Please, she prayed to whichever God would listen. Spare her. Let me die, but spare her.
Schneider reached the button but refused to take her gaze away from Grace. “S-stay back. I mean it.” She fumbled behind her, holding onto Joy with her unarmed hand.
“Freeze!”
Schneider jerked.
“Unhand her.”
Francesco?
The vampire shuffled into view, gun aimed at the doctor, the same gun Beluga had knocked out of her grip outside. Eugene gasped behind him, leaning against the wall, his own gun held at hip level.
“Cleveland PD. Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head.”
Dr. Schneider grimaced, possibilities playing out across the lines of her face. Then she threw the taser to the ground and bawled. Joy took one step away from the doctor and no more, like she was stepping around trash.
“Look at that,” Francesco said as he helped Grace up. “I found a use for this gun after all.”
***
After securing the good doctor to her X-ray table, the four of them made their way upstairs, Joy catatonic the entire way. The smoke damage proved too extensive and Grace couldn’t explain about the codeword, in fact, she could barely walk. But Eugene held onto her sister, directing Joy around with gentle pushes and pulls.
Joy had recognized her, and that was enough, had to be enough. Grace wanted to go back for Sally, but decided that was better for the police. Unlikely the girl would leave with Grace and these two strange men in tow, even for the promised doll.
Francesco filled the silence as they climbed, gums flapping with wet popping smacks. Grace would have punched him if she could have formed a fist.
Apparently, Beluga had beaten Francesco soundly then snapped his neck and left. No clear reason why; maybe the guard thought another patrol would happen by, but no such luck. Quite the opposite, in fact: His people found him. Francesco’s neck was set and allowed to heal. Then he followed Grace’s heightened scent down into the underground. Eugene was nearly to the top of the stairs when Francesco almost bowled him over. A quick explanation and they came running, Eugene piggy backing.
“The whole revolt worked out well,” Francesco said when they reached the security room. “We figured out some time ago that the guards monitored us by sound. But we didn’t communicate by sound, did we? The trick was to let them think we did, whispering to each other from window to window. The real hard part was saying one thing and signing another. Drove me nuts the first few months. But it was worth it.”
He slowed to a stop as Eugene signaled for a rest. “We vamps can take a licking. So that’s what we did. Let them think they’d won. Then, when all the big flashy grenades and whatnot were used up, the vamps we’d changed and concealed over the last few weeks came crawling out of the woodwork.” Francesco scoffed. “The Berets thought they knew how we ticked, how to strip us of everything including our dignity, but their cruel tactics worked against them. They’re too used to fighting weakened vamps. But a fully fed group of us? We’ll tear them apart like tissue paper.”
Francesco’s words seemed to have no effect on Joy, as far as Grace could tell. Though her eyebrow twitched at the mention of the dead Berets.
“My people woke to the blood of Berets, blood lust run wild. You’ve never seen such a beautiful sight.” He trailed off, eyes gleaming as they stared off at something in the distance. “Killing can be such an art when timed just so…”
The change in Francesco’s posture unsettled Grace. Like the violence he didn’t even witness, only imagined, transformed him back to a creature of substance, no longer a gaunt survivor, but a man craving his addiction. “So, the vampires…”
“Are in the wind.”
Grace didn’t know how to take this news. The guards were brutal, yes, deserving the harshest punishments the law could give, but letting eighty vampires go seemed absurd. Especially with how Francesco acted now. If this was their leader after a hint of death, then how would the other vampires keep themselves from feasting on humans? A pinkie promise now impossible to enforce? Some third alternative must be attainable, something Grace might have come up with if she hadn’t been worked to the bone kidnapping mobsters. She stated this last sentence aloud.
“You’ve had years to rally the public,” Francesco said, “to investigate and determine our state in this prison. My people and I lingered in here for decades. Bleeding, weeping, screeching until our lungs gave out for salvation, and no one heard. Some of our own started to believe we deserved this. But I took ahold of our fate. Myself and a few others schemed, and planned, and revolted more times than I can count. If there was some other alternative, we would have reached it.” He looked at her, the far-off glint now gone, replaced with a rage that set his pupils to pinpricks. “Sometimes the only way out is blood.”
Grace let out a breath she’d been holding while he spoke. The words and their truths stung. What were her last few weeks compared to all he’d been through? She really was only a distraction. “This was never my fight.”
Francesco bit his lip, then shook his head. “If that disappoints you, then I’m sorry. Though I expect you'll recover.”
“What about those in the underground?” Grace asked. “The experiments?”
In response, Francesco leaned down and helped Joy along.
“Francesco—”
“The humans will deal with them.”
Grace’s mouth went slack. “You’re leaving them?”
“I must. I can free them from their physical cages, but the cages that matter, the ones that the people of this place installed in their minds over years or decades of conditioning? There, I’m powerless. Even this one—” Francesco motioned to Joy “—may seem stable to you now but wait. The scars will show.”
Grace refused to accept that. Sure, looking at her sister, this unchanged relic of the past, there would no doubt be issues to work through. She had been here for all these years, longer than she’d lived out in the world of middle school and cartoons, but they were still sisters. Still blood. And that cut deep. That flash of recognition Joy had earlier, that was real. And Grace would be damned if she’d let that go.
The foursome entered the main hall of the Hellmouth and stopped short. The locked door to the lobby that had obstructed Grace and Eugene before now stood wide open.
Eugene sucked in a sharp breath. “How–”
The rest of his words were drowned out in concussive blasts of gunfire.
35
Eugene called out as Grace and Joy disappeared in a cloud of red mist. The vampire followed after, brains flying out the front of his skull. Without its support, Eugene fell to the floor, swallowing the pain.
All hope of surviving this died in a blink. There lay Joy, eyes staring. Gore spattered across the front of her shirt. So much for such a small child. Grace collapsed beside her, gurgling, a gaping wound in her neck pumping blood out in a river.
His sidearm, Eugene needed his sidearm. But though he patted his waist again and again, he came up empty. A chill shot down him, ending at the leg which bled once more. He’d given the gun to Grace.
The vampire spasmed. A death throe? Impossible, but there it was, trying to get his legs under him. Then, with brain missing, basic functions compromised, what was left of the vampire crawled, claws clacking across the concrete, towards Cole. A thousand generations of evolution pushed the corpse past death.
Cole aimed at the shambling torso, then reconsidered. Instead of firing, she slammed her elbow into the wall, depressing a hidden button in the shape of a rectangle. The room brightened to harsh white.
The light tore through Francesco, boring holes through his malnourished frame in a blink. Snarls gave way to a single muddled scream as his body disintegrated. Before the scream could echo back, Francesco’s skeleton clattered to a stop, its insides swollen with ash.
Cole lifted a boot and crunched through Francesco’s skull, cracking it to miniscule bits of bone dust. Eugene blanched as she rubbed her heel into the ashes.
He crawled toward Grace. He needed that firearm. This was a fool’s errand but there were no other alternatives; sometimes all survival was only an attempt at saying “no.”
Two pockets. Time enough to check one. Fifty-fifty chance. Tired and unsure if he could reach the farther one, he picked the closest.
Empty.
He clambered for the next pocket anyway but the hard end of the rifle clubbed him in the cheek.
Broken, head pounding, Eugene blinked about as Cole dragged him by the foot across the room. His two charges still lay. Joy. The faux sunlight proved to have no effect–the twisted scientists here had figured out how to beat the sunlight weakness. What's more, there was no wound on her shirt; her breathing appeared regular and she was stirring. She was fine. Better than fine: unscathed. Her eyes popped open and fell on Grace. Her sister gurgled, reaching for her. Joy stared back with the same bland expression of a child watching a cartoon.
Cole propped him against the wall, then went back. What more could this woman do? Everything was already lost.
With a sigh, Cole dug out the firearm. So that was how she’d play it. A me versus them scenario, where he lay shot against the wall, dying a hero preventing vampires from escaping. He’d like to believe people would see through it, but no, the story was too irresistible, too good.
Rather than aim the pistol and cement the lie, Cole did the unexpected: she crouched down next to Joy. “It’s okay.” She held out a hand. “I can take you home, away from these unclean people.”
Nothing. Cole waved her hand in front of Joy’s face. “Ah. I see. Leaf jet on the Cuyahoga.”
The girl snapped back to herself. A light turned on in a dark room.
Eugene didn’t think this betrayal could hurt so soon after the last, but he was wrong, this latest piece a little twist of a knife. How total her involvement was.
Cole repeated herself. Still, Joy sat, her eyes gleaming as her sister’s convulsions started to dwindle.
“I know. You’re afraid,” Cole went on. “But Dr. Schneider told you, didn’t she? The Outside is a terrible place. Wouldn’t you like to go back home? To be with Tabitha and Debra and Sally? I’ll get you as many dolls as you can carry.”
Joy looked at the sergeant for the first time. “I knew you'd come.”
“You’ve suffered so much today. We’ll get you back downstairs in a moment. Now, wait here. I have one more thing to deal with.”
The girl nodded, then mumbled.
“What was that?”
“The…shimmer.”
“Oh.” Cole glanced at Grace and him. “We do have a little time. But only a little. Be quick.”
Joy beamed, her smile a knife blade. He didn’t like that, happiness in this girl felt amiss, sinister.
“Go on. It’s okay.”
Joy lunged. For a moment, he thought she would bite into her sister. Instead, the little girl fell on the puddle of blood and began lapping it up.
