Chapter Twenty-One
EJ
Angie fell asleep. Instantly.
EJ checked on Walter and realized that the vampire was staring at him. Conscious. Focused. While staked. Twice. Under Angie’s null cloak.
Which meant the fanghead had been fully conscious the entire damn time, unable to talk, unable to explain, unable to do anything except lie there and listen and, by the look in his eyes, rage.
EJ knelt at Walter’s side and asked, “Your eyeballs work. Left is no. Are you still hearing the summons?”
Walter looked left. No.
“Do you know why one stake wasn’t enough to keep you in paralysis?”
Walter looked left.
“Do you understand that the brand on your cheek is a geas and a layered working?”
Walter stared at him. Pissed.
EJ grinned. “So you understand that it’s a freaking miracle that you are not currently possessed by a demon.”
Walter glared. His eyes dropped down toward his belly and the stakes.
Grizz knelt beside EJ. Pulled back the slide on a weapon with a distinctive schnick-click. Placed the barrel at Walter’s temple. “Silver-copper RIPs, in a wartime 1911,” she said casually, “will blow your brain apart. As a vamp, you will survive. Sorta. For a while.”
Walter’s glare could have heated iron. Grizz grinned at him, showing teeth in the bloodsucker way. “Yeah, you’re fast. All vamps are fast. Bullets are faster.”
RIPs were Radically Invasive Projectiles. They created seven separate wound channels with a three-to-four-inch spread pattern and a ten-inch penetration. Instantly lethal to humans. Silver-copper composition meant they would kill vamps, slowly and painfully.
Walter looked right. Right again. And right again. Three yeses. He understood the repercussions of misbehaving.
EJ tossed the null cloak away to lie in a pile on the floor. He wrapped his fist around the stakes and said, “On three.”
Grizz pressed the weapon harder into Walter’s temple.
“One. Two. Three.” EJ ripped out the stakes.
Walter grunted out a breath. He didn’t attack.
He didn’t move except to inhale, saying, “They did not know about Villetti’s containment vessel or how their drone attack failed so spectacularly.
They did not know about the staff. I agree with the children that Leviathan was released for the sole purpose of being divided and hosted by multiple beings at the same time, and that they planned to have me possessed and participate in their other goals. There are always multiple goals.
“Also, I’ve asked before and not received a reply. Could they have access to military storage? If so, our enemies will have containment vessels to fill. We need to know what kind.”
EJ tapped his unicom and placed a call to Alex.
The security team and Villetti began going over videos at speed. He shut them out, putting their riddle together with Walter’s question about military access.
Grizz concentrated on Walter, her weapon still pressed to the vamp’s temple.
Alex answered, “What’s up?”
EJ said, “Refining original query. Any military postwar storage facilities been breached since the war? Something buried deep?”
Alex said, “Buried?” and then, “Fuuuu—On it.”
The connection ended.
Their enemies didn’t have Nyoka or Walter.
None of the other players were powerful enough to control a demon.
Konstantin was a much more likely candidate to handle demon power, but a much less likely candidate to allow himself to be branded and a working placed into his flesh unless total control was assured.
Nyoka, Karson, Terenzio Marrazzo, Ravensport, and Konstantin. Nyoka had met with Londyn…
The tea shop.
Nyoka had introduced herself into the plan, disrupting everything. The bad guy in charge took her and was still trying to regroup.
EJ bent over his bodyguard and placed his ear directly over Walter’s brand. Skin-to-icy-skin. Listening. He was only half aware of the sudden silence in the apartment. Of Walter’s shock at his touch.
At the brand’s deepest level, EJ heard drums. Strange rhythms. Tribal, hypnotic, compelling. Forget. Forget. Forget.
He sat back. In the 1700s, when Walter was branded for running away, Nyoka had applied a forgetting working to give her friend peace, but the working was untrained, unwieldy.
A full geas would sing like the choirs of heaven. That had to come during those blissful weeks on the Mediterranean seashore…
He bent again, whistled a note. Listened with his magic.
Ahhh. She had created layers. One allowed Walter to resist the control of Willim.
An anticontrol working would mesh with controlling demon possession.
Initially, Nyoka had given Walter a gift, then later had added multiple layers resulting in a geas.
While Walter slept on their holiday? Why?
And why did that geas make Walter important to their enemies?
Unfortunately, it was nearly dawn, and while Walter was strong enough to not go up in flames if not fully protected from sunrise, he would get a major sunburn. Their fanghead was weak and worn and suffering from blood loss. He’d also been on an anemic diet for too long.
Grizz considered her 1911. Left the round in the chamber. Stepped back.
EJ pushed to his feet. The world whirled. Spun. Swooped. EJ landed butt-first on the floor with a thump that vibrated through him. He caught his upper body with his braced arms, his legs splayed in front of him. A cat stepped up his leg and settled across his thigh.
He’d spent too long in Theta and Delta. Too long supporting his sister. Shared too much of his own magical energies. He was depleted. And he hadn’t kept watch on his fuel gauge. In the depths of his mind, Delta was wilted and frayed, instead of the neatly folded brain waves usually residing there.
Walter’s finger twitched. A faint note sounded.
Without thought, EJ tossed the cat at Pretty Thang.
It had barely left his fingers as Delta Mode tried to open. Failed. But EJ spun from the floor. He caught Grizz at her chest. She rolled away, cursing as she flew.
The room erupted. Weapons’ slides schnicked back.
He slammed the bloody stake back into Walter.
“One guard at his head. One at his feet,” EJ snapped. He sank back to the floor and heaved breaths until he could speak again. “Villetti, I need your null head and arm cuffs. The ones sufficient for vamps. Sorry, Grizz. Did I hurt you?”
“A few bruises and dented pride,” she said. “What the hell?”
“Walter’s brand sang. Villetti!”
“Americans. Always in so much hurry,” the cop said, all Italian, both hands making those motions Italians used to show irritation, fingers-to-thumbs, rocking the hands back and forth.
He eased Angie to the side and tucked the blanket around her.
Standing, he rummaged through his gear, returned, and dangled null cuffs in front of EJ.
He drew a weapon, but placed it on the coffee table and knelt beside EJ, cop eyes piercing. “You look like crap.”
“I feel like crap. Thinking like crap too. The stake hasn’t been doing its job. He’s still conscious. He was a slave. He’s gotta be…under stress. The brand just activated again. I’m open to suggestions.”
“Stress. Understatement.” Villetti placed both open cuffs on Walter’s stomach above the stake.
He took in the guards, none of whom had put away their weapons.
“We will do this slow and steady. Grizz, you are too far away. Headlock with your weapon at Walter’s temple.
Peg, lie across his legs with multiple stakes ready to shove in if he moves when the current one is withdrawn. ”
The cop looked around, spotted Pretty Thang, and added, “Prick your finger or make a thin cut on your wrist. Hold it over Walter’s face. He needs to feed.”
Pretty Thang set the cat on the sofa and sighed.
“Even my blood is beautiful, I get it. But why me?” No one replied, and the man pulled a small blade from a pocket sheath and a tiny ag-plas flat-pack from his other side.
He smeared a drop of the contents onto the inside of his arm and rubbed it in with the other wrist. The scent told EJ he was using Ster-num, a trademarked gel created for use on the battlefield and in field hospitals.
The garlicky-stinking, fast-acting, hard-to-find gel would sterilize skin and numb it for about twenty minutes.
Pretty Thang slid the flat of his blade across the layer of gel and then cut his arm with the edge.
He positioned his wound over Walter’s mouth.
Peg lay on Walter and wrapped his cyborg legs around the vamp’s. Grizz took Walter in a headlock and shoved her weapon up under his jaw.
“You act like you’ve done this before,” EJ said.
Villetti lay across Walter’s body, the null cuffs between them.
“Once or twice,” the cop said, too offhand, too casual.
“Here and there.” The cop took his weapon and aimed it at Walter’s heart.
“Not loaded with silver, but the shredders will turn his heart to mincemeat and stop him until help can arrive to heal him.”
“Help?”
Villetti’s eyebrows quirked slightly. “You didn’t think the queen would fly her banner from your building and not find a way to send the unit’s vampire, did you? Even in a snowstorm? When has a little thing like a blizzard or a flood or a war stopped her?”
“Ah crap.”
Villetti’s eyes narrowed. “You curse like your queen. That’s cute, little boy. Pull the stake out.”
EJ knew he had to do this without Theta or Delta. Just his normal reflexes and his own magic, what little was left of it right now. He gripped the protruding stake. “On the beat after three. One, two, three.” He whistled. Yanked the stake out.
Walter’s fangs clicked down. Bit into the bleeding flesh at his mouth. Pretty Thang’s arm jerked once and then no longer moved. Walter sucked and sucked. And he didn’t stop. Minutes passed.
Pretty Thang slurred his words, saying, “I like a buzz, but I wanna be alive to enjoy it.”