Chapter 24
Tuesday was a bust.
One moment I was deeply asleep, the next I was standing next to my bed, hyperventilating while powerful Intent-driven images flooded my brain and my magic responded almost without direction.
Then I was running through the halls in my underwear, arriving on the sixth floor, my feet covered in blood, in time for Cora Demidova-Gordon to lock me in place with unbearable gravity.
It took everything I could do to utter the words, “Get Nika.”
An hour later, I was in one of the big auditorium classrooms on the second floor, feet washed, wearing sweats, drinking hot chocolate, Buster in my lap and Vesta sitting close behind me on the next stair up.
The room was full of pretty much everyone who mattered, all talking, rushing about, and casting glances in my direction.
“Okay, let’s get this started,” Agent Jensen said, her whole team arrayed behind her. “Omega?”
His avatar was leaning against a wall down front, and he stood up to talk.
“At 3:33 this morning, Arcane came under attack by eight individuals identified as vampires. A half-naked female vampire staggered up to the guard station, crying for help. When the guard broke procedure and opened the door, she attacked him.”
A camera scene on the wall behind him displayed the attack. The woman was just a blur.
“The other seven rushed up just as the first attacker’s head suddenly disappeared.
Almost all of her head. Her incisors and canine teeth were left in the neck of the guard.
The second guard wasn’t bitten, as his own attacker was decapitated before he could bite.
The rest of the attackers rushed the stairwell, although one died before he made it to the door.
Two more died climbing the stairs, one died when he stepped onto the fourth floor, and the other two died while racing onto the sixth floor.
All by decapitation. Blood spatters show all the vampires were moving at full speed when they were decapitated.
Twelve seconds elapsed, start to finish.
“Simultaneously, my drone unit in Craig Blackmore’s room show him jumping out of bed at the exact moment of the attack.
Seven seconds later, he was leaving his room and entering the stairwell as the first vampire exited onto the fourth floor, where it immediately died.
The final two died as he climbed the stairs to the sixth floor.
Closeup images show his left hand flexing as he does when operating his third protocol.
He ended up on the sixth floor, and Cora Demidova-Gordon restrained him with her gravity control as my sister Vesta arrived from her room.
He requested Nika’s presence immediately. ”
The vampire telepath stood up and turned to face the audience.
“Vesta and Omega contacted me, and Vesta opened a portal to Arcane.
Lydia was with me at the time, so she came along.
We found Craig standing frozen at the end of the hall on the sixth floor, which by this time was bedlam.
He immediately dropped all of his shields upon seeing me and revealed all of his thoughts and actions.
“He was awoken by a massive flood of Intent with eight diamond-hard intentions of assassination. The targets were Cora and Wulf. He was operating his killing protocol almost from the moment he stood up. As you know, he managed to kill all eight in seconds, almost half of them from his room, the rest without ever laying eyes on them,” the tall blonde vampire said.
She paused to let that sink in. “He was absolutely certain they were there to kill the twins, but part of him was also afraid he had lost control of his abilities in his sleep.”
Agent Jensen stepped forward. “The eight vampires all carried two aerosol dispersal devices each, along with a one-shot witch-produced shield necklace for protection against directed energy weapons and magic.
Each shield had a ten-minute window of operation, and each dispersal device had three payloads.
Powdered depleted uranium, silver dust, and powdered aconite, with CO2 pressure cartridges to project them under doors.
“The blood spatters were, as Omega said, from fast-moving vampires, and the pictures will be one for the textbooks, eh, Mara?” She glanced at a member of her team who wore a Tyvek suit and carried a CSI kit.
Mara’s suit was mostly clean, but the bags by her feet were bloody on the inside. Six head-sized bags.
“Both guards are alive, the first due to the fast action of the Arcane physician, who is both a doctor and a witch. She says that leaving the teeth in his neck kept him from bleeding out.”
A hand went up down front. “Yes, Katrina, the camera footage from everything caught on camera is available,” Jensen said.
Katrina’s hand went down. “I recognize two of the vampires,” she said. “They are enforcers for Ron Jon in Las Vegas. Carl Biner and Stella Lux.”
Lydia stepped forward. “We have run prints, DNA, and photo recognition and they are all Vegas enforcers.”
“Who is Ron Jon?” Stacia asked.
“He is the successor to the Las Vegas branch of the Coven,” Tatiana Demidova said. “He has not answered his phone in the last forty minutes.” She did not sound remotely happy. Massively, dangerously pissed off is maybe how I might describe her tone.
“How sure are we that Cora and Wulf were the targets, besides Craig’s reading?” Chris Gordon asked. I could feel him glancing my way.
“The vampire who died on the fourth floor was found directly outside Wulf’s room,” Jensen said. “The females on the sixth floor had run directly past Vesta’s room before Craig detached their heads. Both heads rolled all the way to the end of the hall. The bodies fell in front of Cora’s room.”
“You missed the teeth of the female vampire that attacked the guard?” Lydia asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“I mean, you did it on purpose?” she pressed.
“Yes,” I said, paused, and then relented. “The full Apport would have excised Jerry’s throat, which didn’t seem very helpful for Jerry’s sake. You know… to keep living.”
“Ah, you are in there,” Lydia said. “You’ve been so quiet and mopey, I wasn’t sure.”
“I’m kind of a wuss when I get woken early and have to kill a whole bunch of people. I get all whiney and morose,” I said, staring at my hands where they were buried in Buster’s thick fur.
“You have never killed eight people before,” Nika said, frowning as if she didn’t get my sarcasm.
“Till now. I’m experimenting with mopey.”
“Are you shitting me?” the big FBI guy on Jensen’s team asked. Agent Allen, I think his name was.
“He’s deflecting, Mitch,” Gina Velasquez said.
“Yeah Mitch,” I said. “Despite all the fanfare, I was hoping to make it to my eighteenth birthday before I killed most of a dozen people. But here I am, five months out, and I’m already up to nine. Semester just started too.”
“Sucks to have to kill people to save your friends and classmates,” Vesta’s dad said without a trace of sarcasm, pity, or condescension. “But it’s worth it to them, right?”
“Yeah. Cora wanted a rematch, so I couldn’t let them gas her in her dorm room, could I? Along with her roommate,” I added. “Gina, can I stay home from school today?”
“I was going to suggest that very thing,” she said, watching me carefully. “Maybe Vesta would keep you company?”
The slim hands on my shoulders tightened slightly. “Like anyone could stop me,” my wolf-witch said. “And I think you should sleep and finish your cocoa.”
“Unless I wake up killing people again,” I said, taking a sip of chocolate.
“Hush. I’ll be with you,” she said.
“Craig?” Nika said. She hadn’t spoken much besides the quick report she had given, so I was interested in what she had to say. I looked up and met her direct gaze. “You won’t kill anyone by accident. You have very clear and rigid controls over your protocol. Very clear.”
“Oh. That’s reassuring. But I wonder how?”
“I saw images of your mother training you. She followed all the guidelines for training witches. You’re not the first to be afraid of losing control,” Nika said, her tone even.
“Ah, thanks,” I said, meaning it.
“Still mopey?” Lydia asked.
“Director handed me a snow day, so things are looking up,” I said.
“So, if I can recap, a hardened and experienced kill squad attacked Arcane with intent to murder the twins, but all died in less than twelve seconds,” Lydia said.
“They were armored for energy weapons and magic and carried enough poison to kill dozens. They were not armored for Craig. Their confidence must have been high right up until it wasn’t. ”
“Ah, thanks, Craig,” Wulf said from a few seats to my left. His sister was staring at me.
“Sure, Wulf. No prob,” I said, hands back in the fur of my purring cat.
“Why?” Lydia said, rolling her eyes at our side conversation.
“That,” Katrina said, “Is the billion-dollar question. And I plan to head to Vegas to ask it.”
“I’ll give you a lift,” Declan said.
“That would be awesome. Still a few extra hours of darkness out in Sin City,” Katrina said. “See what Carl and Stella were up to recently.” She pointed at the pictures of the two she knew up among the full eight.
I studied Carl, and as I did I realized he was the third vampire to die, just past the guard station. Something else trickled through.
“What was that?” Nika asked, spinning to look at me.
“Ah, that one, Carl. Something in his intent. An image. Two vampires. Male and female.”
“Keep going,” Nika pressed. “Make that image clear.”
I tried. She gasped.
“What?” Tanya asked.
“Tavian and Elisabeta,” Nika said.
“Whoa,” Lydia said.
“No shit,” Katrina added.
“That sounds like a significant clue,” Jensen offered.
“Massive,” Tanya said. “We need to tell Senka.”
“Well, I need to get more proof than a third-hand image from a dead vampire’s mind,” Katrina said.
“I saw what he saw,” Nika said.
“Which makes it valid but still not full proof,” Lydia said, nodding in agreement with Katrina.
“Can you open a portal to here?” Katrina asked Declan, tapping her nano bracelet to send him an address. As she waited for his response, she moved to the six evidence bags and carefully selected two. “I’ll just borrow these for my trip. Help with motivating answers.”
Declan looked at his own wrist, nodded, and flicked a hand without looking up.
A perfect line sliced through reality exactly four inches taller than Katrina.
She smiled a deadly little grin and slipped through the opening in time and space.
No sooner had her back foot vanished than the portal disappeared.
“We need to think about cleanup,” Jensen said. “There’s blood everywhere.”
“Have you collected everything you need?” Declan asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Blood gone,” he said with a smile. He hadn’t moved at all.
“I forget how easy all this is for you,” Jensen said.
“Can we leave?” Vesta asked.
“Why? So your boy toy can wallow?” Agent Allen asked in a snide voice.
Everyone in the room turned to him with varying degrees of disbelief. So did his boss. “Ah Mitch, what are you doing?”
“He fell off a horse,” the older agent said. “I’m kicking him back up on it.”
“He didn’t actually fall off anything,” Nika said. “He killed eight hardened combat vampires before he was fully awake, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t even reached the age of majority yet.”
“It’s an analogy,” Agent Allen said.
“And this analogy of yours works how? He killed a bunch of people and so he should get over it by killing more?” Lydia asked, hands on her hips.
“No. He needs to not get all depressed and angsty,” Allen said. “Gotta face the pain and trauma early.”
“Your father was a rich neurosurgeon in Boston, and you summered in Nantucket,” Agent Jensen said. “What trauma have you faced?”
“You’re all missing my point,” he said.
“The point where you push the incredibly dangerous minor for no reason whatsoever?” Gina asked.
“Let’s see if we can get breakfast,” I said to Vesta.
“Let’s,” she agreed. I stood up with Buster in my arms and stepped down the stairs.
“See? It worked. He’s got an appetite,” Mitch said.
“He always has an appetite,” Toni said as we headed for the door. “Oh, hang around a bit because we want to address the whole school before classes begin,” she said to us.
I looked at my nano bracelet. Just turning five AM. Behind us, Agent Mitch Allen’s voice was drowned out by seven or eight others all pointing out various degrees of idiocy on his part.