Carlotta and the Krius Scepter (Carlotta Series Book 1) (8 page)

“What now?” Brian asked. The box was on the ground next to his feet. I picked it up and memories flooded into me. I knew who I was, what the box was and what I had to do.

“Sorry, Brian,” I said sadly. Then I took on vampire form.

13.
              
Death

I tapped Brian on the forehead and he fell to the ground. Not stunned, but hypnotized, one of a vampire’s most effective talents. According to my watch we had eleven minutes before the explosive collars blew our heads off. It was difficult to read the watch because vampires can’t read. They were almost as feral a breed as werewolves, the hunt and drinking warm blood were their only desires. It was difficult to think straight in vampire form.

I picked the box up as if it was weightless and came round the dumpster snarling with the rage built into a vampire’s genes. The cops froze and I took all three of them. It was all I could do to stop the creature I’d become from slashing their throats. As it was, they fell to the ground, hypnotized and as helpless as Brian.

I looked up the wall and clamped one of the box’s feet in my teeth. Vampires can’t run up walls, but their fingers can gouge through brick as if it was butter. I clawed my way up the building, while brick, stone and mortar fell into the alley as I pulled myself up to the top floor. It wasn’t worth checking if the coast was clear and, in any case, I didn’t have the time.

Swinging through the window I caught a guard standing just inside and knocked him across the floor on his butt. He recovered enough to take his gun from his holster and shot me twice, the bullets going straight through my vampire body and out my back. It’s difficult to kill a vampire. Though a close cousin of humanity, they have distributed organs and rapid healing. Cutting off ones head was the only certain method.

The pain was real enough though and I lost control for long enough for my vampire instincts to slit the guard’s throat ear to ear with a single slice of a long black fingernail. The desire to drink the pulsing stream of blood was overwhelming and I had drunk a pint or two before I got back in control.

That cost me time that I didn’t have to spare. I ran down the gallery and put the box back on the plinth Brian had taken it from. It sat on broken glass but that didn’t matter. It would be safe here. Finding out who
The Don’s
VIP was would have to wait. One of us would find out who he was and stop him. It just wasn’t going to be me.

Images of Thampthis, and the last time I’d seen that box, came flooding back to me as I ran.

“This box is my greatest gift to you,” he’d told me. But I knew what he’d done to have it made and I wasn’t impressed. I shook my head in horror, waving him and his damned box away.

“So few humans left who can perform magic and you slaughtered them after they finished that box.” My voice shook with anger. Three of those magicians had been my friends.

“No one who was involved with the task could be allowed to live. It needed to be hidden and this box will hide it even from your kind.” He offered the cursed thing to me again.

“I could have dropped it in the great sea or thrown it in a volcano.”

“It would have come back and you know it,” Thampthis chided. He was right of course, but there were better options to the one he’d chosen.

“No, you keep it. I’m leaving and I will never return.”

Thampthis was shocked. We had been lovers for the last twenty years and I’d been his wife for seven after he became pharaoh.

“If you will leave me I will destroy all traces of you. You will never again be worshipped as a goddess.”

I laughed and there was irony and sadness in my laughter. He’d never understood that those things meant nothing to me.

I reached the window, pausing for a moment of regret as I saw the guard. Sightless eyes accused me as I made a gesture of sorrow to him and continued my journey. I slid out of the window and clawed my way to the ground. The alley was quiet, but then it had probably been less than five minutes since I rendered the police insensible.

Brian was where I’d left him. I picked him up and strode back towards the garage. All the exertions of the night were taking their toll and there was no moonlight to help me out. I knew I wasn’t going to make it, but then I’d known that before I changed. There simply had been no choice.

Before my strength failed me completely, I staggered into an alley and put Brian down. I touched his forehead and he came instantly awake. He looked as though he was going to scream. I put a finger to my lips in warning and changed back to my normal form.

“You’re a… a…. monster,” Brian whispered.

Apart from the energy it costs to change there was always another consequence. I felt lust rise up in me and the desire to rip Brian’s clothes off was strong enough to take my breath away. Fortunately, because we didn’t have the time for it despite my desires, my weakness made it impossible. I struggled to find the right words. There was so little time and I had to tell him so much.

I glanced at my watch.
Three minutes twelve seconds
.

“No, not monsters, we are shape-shifters and can become what we know. I killed the last true vampire over five hundred years ago.”

Brian looked about him. “The box? Where’s the box?”

“Had to put it back.” I pulled myself up to a sitting position and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Listen to me, we don’t have much time.”

“But the collars…”

“LISTEN.” He shut up and I went into rapid speech mode.

“Our people have many names, in this culture we used to be known as the Fey. We can change into any living creature, but there are rules. You can’t become an elephant or a mouse. Too big a change in body size. We can only stay changed for a couple of hours and then it’s five hours before we can do it again. Capiche?”

Brian nodded. I hoped he was actually following me and not just placating the crazy woman.

“Take off all your clothes and hurry.”

He gave me a funny look, but the desperation in my eyes must have showed and he started stripping.

“We can’t shift our clothes and you can get trapped in them after changing if you’re not careful. Listen. Your mother is your real mother. We breed through humans, but we don’t have many children and most of those are born human. Go to her when you leave here and wait. Your father will contact you in a few days. He’s been wanting to meet you since you were born. He has been watching over you.”

Brian was down to his boxer shorts. He stopped and stared at me.

“Then why…?”

“Experiment. Doesn’t matter now. Collars about to explode. You have to change into a hawk. It’s our favored form and the collar will slide off your head.”

I looked at my watch. Less than two minutes left.

“But what about you?”

“Had to get the box to safety. It’s… dangerous.”

“But you can change…” Brian stopped as he thought through what I’d told him. One change and then a five hour wait before the next one, five hours, six minutes and twelve seconds to be precise; but I didn’t think we had the time for detailed information.

“Can you survive…?”

I shook my head. “You have to change. Say the words ‘I am a hawk’ and think about being a bird. It’s that easy. You were born to do it.”

He slipped out of his boxer’s and a second wave of lust ran through me. He was a fine specimen of a man and I was glad that his body was the last thing I was going to see.

Brian gave me a sad look and closed his eyes, becoming a hawk in less than a second. He was a big variety with a vicious looking beak and fine feathers. You can tell the kind of person one of us is simply by seeing the kind of hawk he becomes. He was a good one and no mistake. His father was going to be so proud.

With one last look at me, the hawk took flight. I watched him fly away, such a majestic sight.

‘You made a right mess of this, didn’t you?’ I accused as I saw my last seconds of life ticking away. All I was supposed to do was find out who
The Don’s
VIP customer was and then escape with Brian in tow.

Waves of lust ran through me, a consequence of the shape shifting that hit all our kind. All those thousands of years of life had come down to dying in an alley with my clothes on. What a disappointment. I sighed and decided I might as well do a countdown. I looked at my watch.

“Eight…, seven…, six…, five…, four..., three…, two…, one…”

14.
              
Is Overrated

“…Boom!”

I stared at the timer on the watch which read 00:00. I pressed the start button and it began counting down another hour. No idea why I did that. We’d been told we might have longer than an hour because the explosives timer counted from when it lost radio contact with the remote, but that couldn’t be more than a few seconds, a minute at most. The hoods had been walking back to the garage and there were buildings in the way that would have blocked the signal.

As if to mock me, the full moon came out from behind the clouds and I strengthened in its light. Standing up, I stared into the night sky. A dark cloud bank was moving away and stars were visible across half the sky. We could have done with that earlier. Now it was irritating.

I glanced at my watch. Nearly two minutes over now. Perhaps the explosives weren’t going to blow up after all? Had they been a bluff by
The Don
to scare us into doing what he wanted?

Then I saw a small dark object flit across the moon, coming down from high above the buildings. I knew it was a hawk as I heard it cry out in triumph as it dived towards me. It was carrying something in its claws and I realized why I was still alive. The boy had taken it high so its signal would reach the collar as soon as possible.

I started to remove my clothes. He would be lost in lust when he landed and besides, that was how I felt too. I owed him and I wanted him.

The hawk dropped a blood covered remote onto his pile of clothes and then landed in front of me, morphing back to human as soon as he landed. He looked wonderful, his skin glistening from his recent exertions and he was bigger than expected in other places. Big enough to satisfy me.

“Vinnie was standing outside the garage messing with it…”

I pressed a finger against his lips while my other hand arrived somewhat lower. I pulled him on top of me and my clothes which I’d dropped to form a blanket. He didn’t need any further encouragement as instinct and desire took over.

-

The boy had more stamina than I expected though it was easy to tell he had little experience. His eagerness and energy made up for it however, and it was a delightfully spent ten minutes before we paused for breath.

“I’m sorry. I should have used protection.”

We might have been lost in lust for long enough to make his recovery of the remote pointless, had he not killed the mood in me with those words. It wasn’t his fault. He could hardly have known how much those particular words would hurt. I rolled away from him and sat up.

“We need to get dressed and get back to
The Don
,” I said, rather more abruptly than I’d intended.

“Have I done something wrong?” Damn it, he could do that vulnerable look men use that always gets to me. I got up and started to dress.

“No. You can’t make me pregnant. No one has ever been able to do that.” Ancient sorrow flowed through me. It was why I had stopped my aging at 16, the perfect age for pregnancy in my tribe all those years ago.

“I’m sorry…”

“I’m over it,” I lied. He started to dress. It only took seconds as both of us were energized by the moonlight. I picked up his discarded collar and examined it. There was no way to remove the strip that I could see, though it could be pulled tighter. I slipped it into my pocket.

“What if it goes off?”

“The one round my neck will be much more of a problem if that happens.”

I checked my watch, forty minutes or so to blast off, round two. And even that might be an overestimate. We needed to move.

“Do you know where we might get a taxi?” I picked up the remote and wiped the blood off it.

“This way.” Brian pointed down the alley and nodded at the remote. “They might be calling him ‘Vinnie-one-eye’ from now on. It’s strange how I had all the instincts of a hawk while one.”

“That’s how it works. I’ll tell you about our people while we run.”

I let Brian take the lead. I was a relative stranger to the city. The last time I’d spent any time here was fifty years ago. I preferred
New York
.

“We were born out of human magic. I was one of the first, so long ago you wouldn’t believe it if I told you. My parents were the tribe’s magicians. Humans were hunter gatherers back then. Not primitive though, my parents could place three sticks to form a tripod and turn them into a massive tribal house for the night. One that not even a rhino could break into. Magic leaves no traces, so all that is forgotten.”

“I bet it would really bum the archaeologists if they knew,” Brian said, turning his head to smile at me.

“The magicians tried to create us to be better magicians. We were their children born in the normal way, but magically more powerful. There were many thousands of tribes and hundreds of them succeeded. We were supposed to replace them as human magicians were getting rarer. But they failed, not one of us could work any magic at all except to shape-shift.”

Brian stopped running and I had to race back to where he’d stopped.

“How was I born if none of you can have children?”

“We can breed with humans and with each other. We rarely get anyone pregnant though. It was a limit built into us because we can live forever, barring accidents or murder. Most of our children are born human even then. I’m just… unfortunate.”

“I’m a half breed?” Brian looked upset.

I shook my head trying to rid it of such nonsense. “There’s no such thing. Our children are either human or one of us.”

Brian wanted to stop and discuss it further, but we didn’t have the time. We were standing by a road busy with a lot of fast moving traffic and I spotted a taxi. I waved it down.

The taxi driver didn’t like the look of us and demanded to see the money we didn’t have.

“Carlo DiMaggio is waiting for us over at his hotel. You want I should call him and tell him you won’t take us?” I looked at the cab’s license. “Frank Noble?”

“Get in,” the cabby snarled in response, and I pushed Brian in the back and followed him in.

“You want I should get one of
The Don’s
men to pay you when we get there?” I loved talking like I was a gangster’s moll from the 1930’s. I’d done it for real back in the day and, except for dodging machinegun bullets, it was always fun.

“If you’re joshing me….”

“Take us to the private entrance at the rear. You know where that is?”

The cabby hunched down in his seat. “Okay lady, I know.”

There was no one on guard when we arrived. I suppose the one place that doesn’t need much guarding is gangster HQ, at least, not if there isn’t a rival gang in town.

“You want to wait for your money?” I asked the cab driver. He pulled away, tires screeching as he performed an over-optimistic U turn.

“Guess he doesn’t,” I said to Brian and he smiled.

The door was locked. I gave Brian a look and then kicked it in with a single well-aimed blow. I looked down the corridor cautiously. It was empty.

“Leave this to me and remember that silver net. We don’t want to get caught under it.”

Brian nodded. “What’re you going to do?”

I took out the remote and his explosive collar. “I’m going to see what these two can do for me. Winning is all a matter of leverage in the end.” I put them back into my pocket, arranging them for easy removal.

We walked down the corridor to the den. No great need for stealth was required. If they hadn’t heard me kick in the front door they were not going to hear us walking on deep pile carpet. When we got to the den I indicated to Brian he should wait while I dealt with
The Don
. I slowly turned the handle and then pushed the door open violently.

It was like a re-run of my first encounter with
The Don
. Only this time I was doing it Fey fashion with thousands of years of fighting experience and fully energized by moonlight.
The Don
sat playing cards with his hoods. I recognized Mario, Pat and Joe. The two bimbos stood a few feet away from me with their backs resting against the wall, drinks trays at the ready.

I took the tray out of the nearest bimbo’s hands and let the drinks fall to the floor. Before they were halfway down, I had taken a running jump in the direction of
The Don
, ripping the mist net above me into two using the edge of the tray. Silver isn’t strong and the stainless steel tray was more than up to the job. My jump took me onto the card table. I ducked as the net fell away to either side and onto the hoods who were still getting to their feet trying to draw their guns.

My momentum tipped the table forward crushing
The Don
into his chair. I dove at him, pushing him back with my hands. That tipped him and his chair over backwards while sending the table crashing back the way it had come and scattering the hoods behind me. Lightning fast reflexes have their uses and I had
The Don
’s trousers unzipped and the collar in my hand before he had finished sliding along the floor. Apparently he went commando, which made it easier to slide the collar over his privates and pull the band painfully tight. I somersaulted over
The Don
to end with my back against the far wall and the remote control in my hand.

The whole fight had taken less than five seconds.

“Put the guns down or I’ll blow off
The Don
’s family jewels,” I shouted.
The Don
lifted his shirt and looked in horror at the explosive collar strapped to his assets.

“Don’t shoot,” he screeched as his men began to raise their weapons. His own was showing signs of going purple as I had pulled the collar very tight. “Put your guns down.”

As his men lowered their weapons, Brian entered the room. He glanced from side to side, grinning at the net dangling down harmlessly and the red faced man on the floor.

The hoods put their guns on the floor and Brian came forward and kicked them away, being careful to avoid getting too close to the netting.

“We weren’t going to kill you. Vinnie reset the remote. It won’t go off if you don’t press the buttons,”
The Don
told me quickly. I admired his coherence considering the state of his assets.

“Sure, we know you love us.” The big problem with gangster talk is that it’s difficult to break the habit once you start.

“It’s the truth. The VIP was furious when he found out I’d put a collar on you. He said he needed you alive.”

That sounded dangerously plausible. If the person after the box was after what was hidden inside it, he might know he needed me as well. Damn Thampthis to hell and back for his limitless stupidity.

“The USB key?”

“Over there, in the top drawer.” He pointed at a bureau in the corner I hadn’t noticed before. I kept my finger on the boom button as I slid along the wall to the bureau and opened the drawer. I took the USB key in my hand with a feeling of overwhelming relief.

“Let me,” Brian said. He stepped passed the hoods, took the key from my hand and pushed it into the socket in the collar. There was a worrying buzzing sound and then the strip came free. I took it off, pulled out the key and threw it across the room. I hadn’t bonded with it very well at all during our time together. It hit the far wall and exploded sending masonry crashing to the ground, not to mention the nearest hood.

“The key?”
The Don
asked. His face was almost as blue as his equipment. I tossed him the key. I was at the top of my game and knew I could take on four hoods with one hand tied behind my back. Apparently they knew it too, because not one of them made a move towards their guns.

The Don
moaned on the floor as he slid the collar off his bits.

“Now tell me who you’re working for?” I asked.

“That would be me,” said a man who stepped into view from the corridor. “How nice to see you again, Cear. It’s been a long time.”

I didn’t recognize the face. The voice was impossible, he was dead.

Two men stepped into view on either side of him, pointed strange guns at us and began firing. Brian and I jumped sideways as the weapons the men carried sprayed small balls at us at high speed. There were too many to avoid. I stared in astonishment when the first hit me and it turned out to be paint. Then the pain from the silver in the paint hit me. A second and third ball hit me and I fell to the floor, rolling over in agony.