Vanquished. Part 40

She became dizzy, and her thighs hurt from crouching for so long. Or was that a symptom of the elixir? Still with her eyes closed, holding the radio, she gripped Skye's shoulders for balance. Anxiety coursed through her at the amount of time it was taking-and at knowing that each spell Skye cast called on her reserves. Did the elixir enhance magickal strength as well? Jenn let go of her and tried to shake her head to tell her to stop. But Skye held her fast.

"We need you, Jenn," Skye said.

"I can hear you," Jenn announced. She spoke into her radio. "Crusader One here. I'm back in the game." To Skye she said, "Thanks."

Skye leaned forward, kissed her cheek, and ran back into the battle. Jenn looked up at the castle windows, wondering where Lucifer, Dantalion, and Aurora were.

And Antonio, she thought. Antonio, please be okay.

Then she pushed him from her mind and got to work.

The day marched on, and Lucifer's side was steadily wearing down the good guys. Jamie wondered what would happen when the sun set. Things would get worse, of that he was certain. After the initial shock of seeing vampires out in daylight, Jamie had realized that not that many Cursed Ones had actually come out of the castle. Lucifer had to have more fighters than that. It stood to reason that not all of them could handle the sunshine, or they'd be out there now. So this was just the first wave of the enemy. There'd be more later. And so many of us will get killed.

Sure and he was livid with the Italians who had shown up with little Sofia, his and Eri's guide into the crumbling Venetian palazzo where they were supposed to meet up with a local resistance cell. Aurora had gotten there first, killed the freedom fighters, and left a note ordering Salamanca to give up Antonio or she'd do the same to them. Now Aurora had Antonio back, and Jamie hoped they'd be very happy together.

In h.e.l.l.

Jamie had been happy to see more fighters, but to bring a little girl along was cruelty and madness. If anything happened to her, some heads were going to roll-and they weren't going to be the heads of supersoldiers and suckers.

As the special forces troops and street fighters covered them with heavy fire, Jamie and Noah stealthily crept behind an outbuilding on the castle grounds that reeked of rot and death. Their side had commenced sh.e.l.ling the castle, and huge chunks of wood and stone provided excellent coverage as they crept toward the main structure. The two carried a brick of C-4 plastic explosive, detonators, and timers in packs on their backs.

They worked well together, him and the Israeli. As much as Jamie detested Jenn, Noah had a fancy for her. For that reason, and that reason only, he hoped they wound up together. On the other hand, if she died, Noah could find someone better. That shouldn't be too hard.

Except . . . Jamie had to admit that Jenn had organized the Allies pretty d.a.m.n well. He should have figured she was good for something-after all, he had originally stood up for her when Father Juan put her in charge-but he had to admit, he was still impressed.

A mortar slammed into the courtyard, sending up a curtain of debris, dirt, and dust-as well as murky water from a cistern. As one, Noah and Jamie raced toward a small arched door in the castle proper. Bad location for a door on a fortress. Jamie supposed it was a modern addition.

Jamie tried the latch, yanking it from the wall. He grinned at Noah, who smiled back. The elixir was proving to be everything he'd dreamed it would be.

It was pitch-dark, and Jamie heard no approaching footfalls, no weapon fire. Grunting, he let Noah take the lead, and he was surprised at how fast the Israeli hustled through the darkness. In no time at all, Jamie's eyes adjusted too. His hand brushed past bars and loose bits of chain. They were down in the bowels of the castle dungeon. They'd discussed the castle's structure. To do the most damage they would have to go up a few floors, to dead center. Blow up its heart.

Gladly.

After a while, Noah slowed. A small light shone ahead, and both men flattened themselves against the wall. Jamie was covered in sweat. He'd never felt so alive.

Noah muttered something that Jamie couldn't translate. Then he touched Jamie's shoulder, and they moved on.

A torch flickered in a rusty sconce. It cast a glow on a metal door. In the soft light, Noah looked at Jamie, who shrugged. If Noah thought they should check it out, fine with him.

They glided forward. Noah reached the door first and peered cautiously through the slat in the center of the door. He jerked, then moved away so Jamie could have a look.

Antonio was chained to the wall. He was covered with blood and appeared to be unconscious. If he were true dead, he'd be dust.

Jamie and Noah shared a look. Then Noah said, "I told her I wouldn't kill him. I didn't say I'd rescue him."

Jamie nodded, relieved. His thinking exactly. Liking the lad even more, he gave Noah the signal this time, and they moved on.

Jinx, one of Esther's friends from the old days, went down face-first into the mud and debris of one of the castle's exterior stairways. Esther hovered six steps above him, the vampire that had bitten him turning to dust on the end of her stake. Esther stared down at Jinx and experienced a brief flashback to the days when they were underground revolutionaries. It was 1968, the so-called Summer of Love, when Jinx had had the most magnificent Afro and Esther wore little piggy earrings, her comment on police officers. Now Jinx was bald and just too old to fight.

Bobby, another of Esther's friends from back in the day, knelt beside Jinx and turned him over. Jinx's eyes stared gla.s.sily at nothing.

Bobby closed Jinx's lids and climbed the stairs to Esther. They shared a brief hug. Esther's heart ached.

"Long live the revolution," Bobby said.

They moved on.

Kenji Sakamoto had discovered that while j.a.panese and Spanish shared the same p.r.o.nunciation for most syllables, his troops from Pamplona had yet to realize that bellowing at him in their native tongue did no good. Still, by their pointing and shouting, he understood that something was behind him. Something bad.

So he pivoted with his wakizashi samurai sword at chest level, whirling around and slicing a hybrid through its leathery, fur-covered chest. The thing roared but didn't even stumble, so Kenji threw his weight on his front leg and pulled the sword back across its chest, as if he were rewinding his action. The razor-sharp blade tore through muscle, bone, and layers of cartilage as the creature's torso split in half. The upper half folded backward, and blood sprayed like a geyser.

Kenji's Pamplonans cheered, "Ole! Ole!" and then got back to the business of slaughtering everything in their path. When he'd first been put in charge of them, Kenji had been rather dismissive, a.s.suming they were raw, untrained civilians who would get in his way. Unlike the Salamancans, the j.a.panese Hunter fought alone. But these men and women had grown up around bulls and bullfighting, and they quickly adapted many of those stylized moves to fighting the hybrids. Kenji's fighting style was unlike theirs; it consisted of long series of forms, or kata, that he employed in different combinations to achieve his end goal-slaughter.

They had planted their flag-so to speak-on the western side of the castle, and they'd been laboring for hours to take more ground. Though Kenji had seen other groups battling Cursed Ones, his team had been bombarded by hideous monsters as well as humans with wide, unfocused eyes who had been mesmerized into fighting for the enemy. Kenji killed both without mercy. His mission was clear: There were no innocent bystanders in the conflict. He felt absolutely no remorse at dealing death to those under the vampires' spell. His cause, his team, came first.

The Spaniard nearest him yelled and pointed as a hybrid leaped from a turret, falling like a bomb toward Kenji. Taking two steps back, Kenji held out his sword sharp side up, cutting the monster in two from crotch to chin.

"Ole!" his people called, and Kenji gestured for the entire group to move up one step on the stairway. One step at a time; that was how they would take the castle.

"Finally," Lucifer said. He'd put a collar around one of his hysterical vampire minions, pushed her through the black velvet curtains shielding Dantalion and his dog, Heather, and himself from the sunlight, waited ten seconds, and dragged her back in. She was intact. She hadn't been given the injection that protected their kind against the sunlight, and she hadn't burst into flames. Ergo, the sun had set.

On this night Lucifer was taking no chances.

He swept over to his bank of computers, manned by vampiric programmers, and studied the streaming images. All around the world, inspired by the so-called Voice of the Resistance, the humans were rising up and fighting the vampires. Some fought Solomon's vampires; others attacked Lucifer's "guests." In many places the humans were winning. Losses were inevitable. As long as the tide turned-and it would-he would win the war.

"What about the virus?" Heather asked anxiously.

"Oh, Heather, Heather, you have so little faith in me," he said.

Gesturing for her and Dantalion to follow him, he led them back down to the dungeon. He rapped softly on Antonio's door, then moved past it to another cell. Inside, a tall man hung from the wall in the same posture as Antonio. His eyes were swollen shut, and his jaw was broken. He was human.

"Heather, Dantalion, meet Greg Ba.s.singwaite, the leader of Project Crusade. Which is no more," Lucifer added. "Right, Greg?"

Greg's chest rose and fell, but he remained silent.

"A team-my team-swept into their 'secret lab'"-Lucifer made air quotes-"and investigated. It was just as Antonio said. The virus doesn't work."

"When did you know? How?" Heather asked excitedly.

"We took over the lab and spent nights a.n.a.lyzing it. And then we put Dr. Michael Sherman in a special vacuum chamber and opened a vial of it in there with him." Lucifer tsk-tsked. "Nothing happened to him."

Heather clapped her hands. "Good!"

Lucifer glared at Greg. "Then my entire team was exposed to it, and no one so much as sneezed." He grabbed Greg's head and smacked it against the wall. "I don't know how you fooled Solomon into thinking the virus was an actual threat, but I congratulate you."

"Huge . . . risk," Greg said through swollen gums.

"A huge risk for you? Yes. And for me, opening the genie's bottle? Yes. But as I say, we a.n.a.lyzed it first. Thoroughly." He gestured to Dantalion. "Of course, my own vampire scientist took part."

"There's no way it would have ever worked," Dantalion a.s.serted. "Sherman was deluded."

"No," a voice said brokenly from a third cell.

"Si," Lucifer insisted. He steered the party out of the human's cell and opened the door to the third. There Dr. Michael Sherman was chained, not to the wall but spread-eagled on the floor. He, too, had been horribly beaten.

"This is how we'll stake you out tomorrow," Lucifer said. "After all the humans are dead. You won't get the injection that lets you walk in sunlight."

"I still wish you'd let me study his blood," Dantalion said. "To see how he could do that. How he could help them. I could compare it with Antonio's blood, see if the traitors share anything in common."

"It was never about helping them," Sherman whispered.

Lucifer kicked him in the side. Then he gestured for his entourage to leave.

They swept back upstairs into the great hall, where the choicest Allied prisoners of war had been thrown into cages for the vampiric elite to dine on as they stood on the balconies of Castle Bran and watched humanity die. Some of his elegantly dressed guests were sampling American soldiers and Israeli Mossad troops. Others savored the gamey blood of a captive werewolf.

"It's time," Lucifer said to Dantalion.

With Heather at his side, Lucifer watched Dantalion walk toward the balcony where vampires in gowns, military regalia, and tuxedos were observing the battle. Uneasy smiles greeted him, and the vampires parted, making way for him. The Russian vampire's reputation preceded him.

Dantalion moved regally to the front of the balcony and placed his hands on the railing. His dog joined him. Then Dantalion leaned over.

"Do it," Lucifer murmured.

"Do what?" Heather asked curiously.

At the upper entrance to the castle, Skye was shaking. She, Lune, and Soleil had just killed a Cursed One exactly as they had murdered Estefan, by forcing the blood to stream out of his body. The vampire had screamed as he bled. Then he had exploded into dust. She hadn't expected their spell to work on a vampire. She remembered how Estefan had bent over her as if he was going to bite her-the way a vampire would. What had he become? Were there more of them inside the castle?

Something was changing in the magickal fabric around them. Not only was there less white Magick, but Skye could feel black Magick shimmer in the night sky, and she shivered. The other witches sensed it too, hesitating in battle. The male witch Gordon looked over at her, just as an enemy werewolf lunged at him, knocking him down.

"Incendio!" Skye shouted, lobbing a fireball at the werewolf. With the elixir singing through her veins, it was bigger and moved faster than she had antic.i.p.ated.

It found its target, and the wolf caught fire, screeching. The animal transformed into a man, writhing in the snow. Skye fought her impulse to heal him, instead running to Gordon. His throat was missing, and his eyes gazed at nothing. She was too late.

"Oh, G.o.ddess, no," Skye whispered.

Another werewolf growled on the wall above her, and she leaped to her feet as other witches converged on the creature, throwing fireb.a.l.l.s, casting lightning bolts, sending pain its way. It showed its teeth and began to spring.

"Skye!" Holgar cried, racing up behind her with a black werewolf at his side. Skye recognized Viorica, the Transylvanian female pack leader, and she was seized with fear.

"Why are so many werewolves attacking us?" she demanded.

"They're rival packs loyal to Lucifer," Holgar said. The black werewolf was growling at the werewolf on the wall. Viorica looked over at Holgar, and he gestured to Skye. "She wants to know if you can help me change with magick." He sounded desperate, humiliated.

Then an explosion rocked the earth. The werewolf on the wall lost its balance and fell backward, plummeting down the craggy mountainside. A second explosion threw Skye to the ground. She watched as Holgar flattened beside her with a roar that seemed to shake the very earth beneath her feet. And there, inches from her, he began to transform.

"It's the elixir," he said as he began to howl.

Skye gasped as she watched it happen. It was the first time she'd seen him change, and he was magnificent. When at last he was in full wolf form, she heard herself cheer. He had done it! He had shifted on his own. And the devil help all those who stood in his way.

Evil seethed like miasma around Antonio. It didn't take witchly powers to know that upstairs Lucifer was unleashing something powerful and terrible. He thought of his teammates, and of Jenn, and yanked on his chains again. The tortures inflicted by Aurora had been nothing compared to what Lucifer had done to him-with one important difference: Lucifer had not tricked him with magicks to drain humans. He was still good, still in command of himself.

He pulled and yanked, lifting his feet off the ground in order to put more stress on the manacles around his wrists. The metal cut into his flesh, and he hissed in frustration. He was a vampire, endowed with superior strength. But still the chains held him.

The evil, whatever magick it was that Lucifer was conjuring, was palpable. It seemed to rise like fog around his ankles, then his knees, then his thighs. Something was creeping up toward his mouth, and he knew that if it got inside him, he would be d.a.m.ned again-possibly forever. In a frenzy of horror he flailed and struggled.

And then the right manacle detached from its chain. With the handcuff still around his wrist he grabbed the chain attached to his left manacle and pulled down as hard as he could.

It, too, gave way.

Antonio was so weak that he fell to his knees. He pushed himself back up, lurching forward, then staggering to the cell door. He thought he would have to force it open, but a swift push against it and he was out.

A sense of doom wrapped around him like a shroud. He shivered, moving forward on his bare feet.

"Vampire," a voice called softly. It was the scientist Michael Sherman.

Antonio crossed to his cell door and peered through the slat. Sherman was in bad shape.

"I'm here," Antonio told him.

"It worked," Sherman said. Slowly he raised his head, and Antonio saw that they had pulled out his fangs. "My virus worked. My handler's in the next cell," he added.

Antonio moved to the third cell. A man he didn't recognize was staring at the door. He remembered the name Lucifer had spoken: Greg Ba.s.singwaite. Was this the same Greg that Jenn had told him about?

"What's going on?" Antonio said.

"Setup," Greg slurred. "Project Crusade."

Antonio opened the door. He grabbed the man around the torso and broke first one chain, then another. Hoisting the man over his shoulder, he left the cell. Then he opened Sherman's.

"No," Sherman said weakly. "I just want it to be over." He shook his head. "It would work. I ran so many tests." He looked up at Antonio. "I think they planned this. Project Crusade." He jerked his head at Greg. "Why move to Romania? Why so close to this castle? So Lucifer would find us. And he would think the virus didn't work."

Antonio c.o.c.ked his head. What he was saying made sense.

"I think the Allies have the virus," Sherman concluded. "And I think they're going to release it tonight. Wipe us out."

Antonio listened hard. "Why wait?"