All Hell Breaks Loose (44 page)

Julius flicked a hand nonchalantly at the camera, and it simply vaporized into dust particles.

Gabi reached out a hand to catch some of the particles as they drifted towards the floor.  “Cool,” she drew out the word, “fairy dust.”

“Let’s go,
Tinkerbell
,” Alexander said, knocking her with his shoulder on his way past her.

She aimed a kick at his rear, but he was too fast.

They continued down the darkened corridor.  A second door appeared to the left of the corridor.  This one was locked and secured by a keypad.  Fergus aimed one of his size 13 boots at it, and it gave way with a startled shriek of metal.  The team braced, fighting positions held, weapons still drawn.  Nothing happened.  Nothing leapt out of the dark at them, no sound came from inside.  A distinctly wolfish scent drifted out to envelop them like an unwanted phantasm.  After a second of no attack, Marcello and Fergus darted inside, closely followed by Charlie.

“Holy
fookin
’ Christ.”
  Fergus’s voice echoed softly, revulsion clear in his tone.

There wasn’t enough room for the rest in the doorway, but Gabi impatiently dove between the Vampire bodies, squirming to get to the front to see what was inside.

“Whoa,” she said, coming to a halt in the middle of the room, just ahead of the Vampires.

“Gabrielle,” Julius exclaimed, frustration in his tone. The Vampires moved to give him access to the scene as well.  He stopped right next to her.

The room was a storage area.  Stacked on one side were large, metal chests, some over six feet long and two feet deep.  The lids of several of the boxes were scattered across the floor, as though opened in a hurry.  Inside was every modern weapon known to man, as well as some Gabi had never seen before.  Hand guns, assault rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers,
Tasers
, grenades,
cases of ammunition.  The list would be endless.  The view on the other side of room was less deadly but far more horrifying.  Metal shelves groaned under the load of preserved medical specimens: foetuses, organs, hands, feet and several skulls and heads.  Pieces of
Werewolves
, humans and true wolves, some bits a grotesque amalgamation of all three.

Gabi fought back the bile clawing its way up her throat.  Sick.  Jason King was sick.  It was as simple as that.  The world would be a far better place without him in it.

“What’s inside the cold storage?” she asked, looking towards the rear of the room where
a bank of small, rectangular, refrigerated doors were
set into a steel-plated wall.  She knew she didn’t really want to see what the cold storage contained, but she had to.  This was part of the job; this was why she did it.  She needed to see what happened when no one cared enough to step in and eliminate evil.  It was what made her pull on her fighting gear and weapons and go out there when it would be easier to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head.

“We can check these later,” Julius began.

“No,” she growled. 
“Now.
  I want to see now.”

Fergus and Charlie backed out of the room, to stand watch in the corridor, while Marcello moved to open the first door.  Gabi held her breath, dread clogging her throat.  The latch clicked open, and Marcello reached in to pull out the steel tray.  Empty.  Gabi let the breath out and then tensed for the next one.  Empty.  She was starting to wonder if she was just being paranoid. 
Drawer three.
  They could smell the rot and decay the instant the air from inside the hollow touched their noses.  Not a strong smell but enough to wrinkle a Vampire’s nose.  It was a young man, almost more of a boy, probably no older than nineteen or twenty.  Dark, mottled bruises marred the side of his face, his glassy eyes stared unseeingly, and to Gabi’s mind accusingly, up at them.  No attempt had been made to show any respect for the body, no sheet or clothing covered the corpse.  It simply lay there like a slab of meat.  He’d been gutted, the ragged tears in his flesh consistent with enormous claws and teeth.  Whatever had attacked him had been trying to eat the boy alive.  Gabi clenched her teeth hard to control the sudden tide of nausea.  She swallowed.

“Next,” she ordered Marcello.

He slid the boy back into his cold tomb and pulled open another one.  This one didn’t seem to have quite the same degree of decay, though with the overpowering scent of death and wolf in the room, Gabi found it hard to tell.  The body on this tray looked more like the wolf-men they’d encountered minutes ago. 
But smaller, lighter-framed, more human looking.
 
Human enough for it to be apparent that it was female.
  Gabi had no words, but a cold, diamond-hard fury began to burn in the middle of her chest.

“Enough,” Julius said, his voice sharp.  He pushed the body back inside its hollow and slammed the door shut. 
“Time to finish this.”
  He captured Gabi’s shoulder and spun her to face him.  “Let’s finish this,” he reiterated.  “We’ll raze this place when we’re done.  No one else will ever try this again in our City,” he vowed.

She looked up at him, searching his face.  He meant every word he said.  She liked the way he said ‘our City’.

“Yes,” she agreed darkly, “let’s go capture a monster.”

They moved silently out of the horror storage room.  The passage continued for several metres and made a turn to the right.  As they moved, a camera hummed in a corner, swivelling towards them.  A quick swipe of Fergus’s broadsword sent it tumbling to the floor in pieces.  The passage ended in a half-open doorway.  The team paused to regroup at the door before Fergus pushed it completely open, and they began to file through.  As Fergus’s head cleared the door frame, a splutter of gunshots erupted towards them.  Bullets ricocheted off the walls and steel door, and Julius’s arm slammed Gabi up against a wall.  The rest of the Vampires didn’t hesitate to rush inside, directly into the line of fire.  Quick and ethereal as ghosts, they disappeared into the room.  Gabi glanced to check on James, he was also pressed against the wall, but by his own choice.  He didn’t seem to have any bullet holes in him.  Gabi pushed at Julius’s restricting arm.

“
Lemme
go,” she growled.

He released her and spun to precede her into the room.  The shots had ceased, and a man could be heard begging, almost crying.  Gabi resettled her annoying bulletproof vest into place and quickly caught up with Julius.  As they stepped into the room, Gabi felt her eyebrows shoot up involuntarily.  It was a laboratory straight out of a Hollywood horror movie.

“Well, dye my hair black and call me Selene,” she said, over the human’s whining.

Julius quirked an amused eyebrow in the dim lighting.
  “I hope that doesn’t make me Viktor,” he responded.

Gabi actually felt her mouth drop open in shock.  “You’ve watched
Underworld
?” she asked in open disbelief.

He cracked a lazy smile.  “You know I have a thing for hot chicks in fighting leathers
who
kick supernatural butt,” he said with a cool shrug, but mirth glinted in his eyes.  He liked being the one to shock her for a change.

“I don’t think this is our intrepid Mr King,” Alexander interrupted their aside.  He poked his toe at the man cringing on the floor in a far corner of the open-plan laboratory.  The man still hadn’t let up his litany of pleading for his life.  He was kissing fifty and sported a receding hairline, grey trousers and a white lab coat.  His glasses were perched precariously at an awkward angle on his nose, and the scent of fear poured off of him in waves.  A pile of handguns, hand grenades and an assault rifle lay in a heap a few feet from him, guarded by Charlie.  Fergus held a sub-machine gun nonchalantly in one fist.  The muzzle was bent back on itself.

“Please don’t kill me, please don’t.  I was only following my orders.  Please,” the man stammered.

“Shut up,” Gabi snapped at the man, stepping close to him.

The man subsided, though his lips still moved as though he was praying silently.  She crouched down in front of him and brought
Nex
up under his chin, pressing to get the man to look her in the face.  She allowed him to see just how much the thought of his impending death pleased her.  He went utterly still, not even daring to breathe.

“Where is Mr King?” she asked in slow, measured words.

The man swallowed convulsively, trying to form a reply.  His Adam’s apple bobbed within a hair’s breadth of
Nex’s
vicious tip.  He gave up trying to speak and simply pointed at another door set into an alcove on the far left of the lab.  It had the requisite keypad and retinal scanner to one side of the door.  She surged to her feet.

“Secure the lab rat,” she ordered James.  She watched the man’s eye bulge in panic as an invisible force suddenly held him in place.  “It’d be easier to find something to tie him up with,” she commented to the Magus.

“I’ve got this.”  James waved her off and started opening cupboards at random.

Gabi joined the Vampires at the last door.  Fergus moved slightly so as to shield Gabi, and Julius blew the door.  Not being glass, it wasn’t quite as spectacular as the front doors.  The solid steel simply buckled and swung open with a groan, and Gabi cocked her head so that she had a view inside the room.  Jason King lounged behind a large, ornate wooden desk, looking far too confident for a man trapped by a team of Vampires.  Marcello and Fergus stepped towards the door, Charlie shifting to cover Gabi, and Alexander doing the same to Julius.  As Marcello slipped in through the doorway, intent on the man in the business suit, Gabi suddenly became aware of a tingling in the air, and the faintest smell of ozone.

“NO,” she yelled, lunging around Charlie to grab at the Italian Vampire.

She was an instant too late.  The world slowed to a crawl.  Fergus spun to look at her questioningly, Julius made a grab for her, and Marcello suddenly stopped, looking down at himself, as several thin trickles of smoke drifted up from burnt, horizontal lines running across his body.  They all glanced to Marcello the moment they smelt the burning flesh.  The Italian gave a small, regretful smile, and then his body fell to the ground.  It had been neatly dissected into pieces.  Almost before the pieces hit the tiled floor, they began to turn to ash.

“No,” Gabi whispered the word, disbelieving—her mind not comprehending the loss of the man she thought of as a friend and comrade. 
A Vampire, all but indestructible, gone in a heartbeat.
  The feeling of ancient grief erupting from Julius bowed her head, but just as fast, the sound of a chuckle snapped her head back up.  Jason King had risen to his feet and was walking around from behind his desk.

“I have to admit, I wasn’t entirely sure that would work on Vampires.  It was designed as protection from the wolves, actually, in case of a revolt,” he drawled.

He was dressed impeccably in a tailored charcoal suit and pale blue shirt.  Gabi had referred to his build as pudgy, but that wasn’t true by human standards.  He was a little soft, but he obviously watched his weight and probably hit the gym daily.  Many women would have swooned over him, even without his money and power, but Gabi could see the minute marks that told a tale of numerous surgical improvements.  The face Mr King sported now was not the face he’d been born to wear.  “But it seems to be very effective.  Don’t you think?” he asked coolly, leaning back against the front of his desk and contemplating the scattering of ash and bits of clothing that only
moments ago had been Marcello.  Rage surged through
her,
matched only by the fury she could feel burning away the grief inside Julius.

“Mr Jason Sweeney, I presume?” Gabi sauntered forward, keeping her eyes away from Marcello’s remains, as she tried to regroup.

Jason’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, and the mirth disappeared from his face.  “I prefer Jason King,” he corrected her.  “I wouldn’t step any closer if I were you, Miss Bradford.  I know you’re not entirely human, but I’m sure you’re not tougher than a Vampire.”  The tiniest glitch in the tone of his voice gave away his uncertainty.  He was playing it cool with the Vampires, but he wasn’t sure about her.  Closer now, Gabi could sense the current in front of her.  An inspection of the walls on either side of the door revealed tiny, lens-covered holes spaced a foot apart along the entire length of both.

“Laser technology.
  A wonderful thing,” Jason said effusively, noting the direction of her gaze.  “Lasers cut through absolutely anything. 
And with such precision.
  I even have my own special design that is invisible to those who normally see ultraviolet and infrared light.  Engineering geniuses are hard to find, but so worth the effort.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

A roar of pain-laced fury erupted from Fergus as he took a threatening step towards the pompous ass.  The man flinched involuntarily, his face losing a little of its colour, but he didn’t change his stance or back away.  Julius and Gabi both put restraining hands on Fergus.  Gabi could feel a thread of communication flowing between the two Vampires, and for just a second, Fergus’s grief was as clear to her as Julius’s.

“What exactly do you think you’re playing at, asshole?” Gabi demanded.  “Do you think that if we can’t get to you through your front door, we’ll just give up and walk away?  Or maybe you’re going to keep us talking long enough for the sun to come up, and then you’ll blow the roof off the building, letting the sun get the Vampires.”  As she spoke, she was assessing every item she could see in the room beyond, as well as the distance between the laser beams across the door.  His back-up generator had to be in the room with him.  He might be insane, but he wasn’t stupid.  The laser beams at the door were set about a foot apart, so she could easily throw a dagger between them, but she wasn’t sure if there were any other lasers in the room.  As a second resort, she had the
Werewolf
sedative darts.  She was fairly sure they wouldn’t kill him.  Well, that’s what she’d claim afterwards.  Once they knew where all the lasers were, they could come in from a side wall or the roof.