Chapter Thirty-Five

 

 

 

“Keep your head down and do exactly as I say,” Halloran commanded.

“Don’t get your hopes up.” Asher regretted the quip as soon as he set foot above ground and saw what Halloran must’ve sensed down in the crypt.

Buckshot and splinters dusted the church nave. Bullets had perforated the wooden pews, rendering them useless as barricades. Asher had been hoping their jailers had fled in the commotion. No such luck, although Malachi’s men were rather too preoccupied to pay their prisoners any mind.

“Go,” Halloran said, low under his breath, and squeezed Asher’s wrist in a vague indication that he should veer left.

Around the altar it was, then.

A sudden burst of sound and jagged shards stopped Asher in his tracks.

He ducked as the skylight behind the cross burst into piercing fragments. Glass shattered and crunched underfoot, a body rolling through the newly formed aperture and leaping effortlessly to its feet.

From the smoothness of the landing alone, Asher guessed that it wasn’t human. The fast-healing cuts on its face and the fangs it bared cleared up any lingering doubt.

The vampire lunged at him, but Halloran was faster.

They collided like two immovable objects, the church ringing with the force of impact. Momentum turned against the unknown vampire, who fell back, skidding on debris-strewn stone. Its snarl raised the hairs on Asher’s nape.

He’d seen vampires rage before, but not like this. This creature seemed more animal than man. It shifted its weight to its back leg and kicked up again, this time aiming for Halloran standing in its path.

Asher opened his mouth—to warn, to draw the vampire’s attention—but Halloran had already made up his mind to fight rather than run. He caught the vampire by the neck, his head swinging violently to the side under the force of a fearsome backhand. In his stead, Asher would’ve been spitting loose teeth.

The vampire made to wedge a foot between them and break free. For a moment, it he seemed likely to get his wish. Then Halloran seized its heel and twisted hard enough that the crunch of bone was audible under the vaulted church ceiling.

Vampires healed inordinately fast but they weren’t impervious to pain. The creature screeched and fell to the ground, its knee dislocated. Before it could scramble to reset the joint, Halloran was upon it, a torn-off piece of the cross in his hand. It shouldn’t have been enough to finish his opponent. Lumber was just lumber until it slashed a vampire’s head off.

Halloran took two more stabs at it before the creature stopped flailing. Its head lolled away over the stone, expression a cross between surprise and animal frenzy.

A puddle the color of spilled wine had swelled between the body and the pulpit. Asher couldn’t fathom ever touching another drop of the stuff.

“We have to keep moving. Blackjack will have a horse ready… Asher. Asher, you with me?”

Halloran’s features floated into view, twisted with worry.

“I…yes. I think so.” Asher shook himself. Outside, another flurry of gunfire inspired the need for doing rather than thinking. He could wrestle with what he’d witnessed later.

He didn’t question why Halloran felt it necessary to anchor a hand in his sleeve and drag him along over the spill of broken glass. The church echoed behind them, screams and snarls confounded. Asher made to turn his head but Halloran had already pulled him through a side door and the chaos was fell from view.

It was no more comforting to be outside in the bedlam of a vampire-on-vampire skirmish. Asher had seen the like once before, but Redemption had been different. Flames had engulfed the town, casting every face into sharp focus. Here, the darkness was compact. Asher heard scuffles and gunshots, but he couldn’t hope to pinpoint their origin.

“Why are they shooting?” he panted, his throat scraped raw by the cries he couldn’t afford to let out. “Why not just…” Do as you did.

Scanning their surroundings, Halloran exchanged his grip on Asher’s sleeve for a hand pressed to the small of his back. “You let a bloodsucker get too close, who knows what might happen. Move.”

Asher spurred his feet. His heart was lodged in his throat, his thoughts empty of all but the simplest instinct. Run. Survive. Kill or be killed. He didn’t quite believe the last one until a figure leaped into his path and the two vampires chasing it picked up the tattoo of his pulse beats.

Halloran shoved him back, but his presence was no deterrent. The vampires bared their fangs and dove for him, as agile as felines blessed with superhuman strength. They bore Halloran down into the dirt like a sack of potatoes.

The ground cracked beneath their bodies. Dust eddied around them, stinging Asher’s eyes. He raised a hand to shield his vision only to see, through the gaps between his fingers, that one had succeeded in breaking away.

“I remember you.” With blood smeared all over her face and fangs garishly displayed, Lucretia was unrecognizable until she spoke. “You betrayed us!”

Asher’s hands twitched at his sides. Lucretia would have turned Uncle Howard into her plaything and disposed of him once she was bored. It was hard to feel any remorse for robbing her of the opportunity.

“Not quite,” Asher rasped, “but I did put a bullet in your beloved mayor.”

The vampiress gave a piercing shriek and pounced. She moved like something out of a nightmare, the air barely stirring before her body slammed into Asher’s.

His brain rattled in his skull. Dimly, he thought he heard someone shout his name, then gunshots, but the praying mantis striving to pluck out his eyes proved slightly more pressing. He wrestled her back as best he could, shoving and kicking, parrying with his metal-plated arms whenever she made to bite him. He missed once—only once—and Lucretia latched on to his throat like a dog with a bone.

Asher cried out, fumbling blindly for some sort of weapon on the ground. A loose piece of rock slid into his palm, about the size of a coconut. He didn’t think of the dead vampire in the church as he brought it down hard on Lucretia’s temple. He didn’t think of anything beyond terror.

The blow wasn’t enough to kill Lucretia, but Asher managed to dislodge her long enough to press a hand to the wound in his throat. Blood seeped through his fingers, but he could still breathe. If not for the metal sewn into his flesh, she would have taken out his artery.

Shaking herself, Lucretia swung a bloodshot glare toward Asher.

The rock trick wasn’t going to work twice, so Asher threw the stone and tried to scramble to his feet. The ricochet reached his ears just as Lucretia grabbed his ankle.

He fell hard, smacking his chin on the ground. He’d been here before—at Willowbranch, with Halloran. His first attempted escape hadn’t quite worked out the way he’d hoped. Few of his plans ever did. He kicked blindly against Lucretia’s grip, putting every ounce of strength he still possessed into freeing himself.

It didn’t work. Lucretia hissed and tightened her grip, grinding the bones in his ankle against each other. On his sixth or seventh attempt, beginning to tire, Asher remembered what he’d seen Halloran do in the church and aimed his kick at her forearm rather than her hand or face.

Vampire bones were still bones. Lucretia’s cracked like snapped kindling.

Asher crawled away on elbows and knees, dragging himself to his feet against the wall of the church. By the time he braced for Lucretia’s next attack, there was no longer any need. Halloran stood above her, a pistol in his hand.

A thin filament of smoke rose from the barrel. Asher hadn’t even heard the gunshot.

Lucretia’s body shriveled in those horrible, final throes. The other vampire, the one Halloran had been wrestling with, was already a steaming puddle of viscera.

Halloran glanced up at him, gaze intent. “All right?”

Asher mustered a nod. Lucretia had barely scratched him. He was fine.

He had to look away from the thing that had once been Lucretia before he retched. The flurry of vampires darting in and out of sight served as distraction.

The worst of the fighting seemed contained around the town hall, though now and then someone would crash through a shop window or wind up jettisoned from a rooftop. It took Asher a moment to realize that Malachi had placed his men at altitude precisely so they could pick off the enemy as it blew into town. His loyal human thugs were as good as cannon-fodder for the surviving bloodsuckers who’d left Redemption before it had burned to the ground. His vampire acolytes seemed to be faring a little better, when they weren’t fleeing.

Someone whistled from across the square. Asher caught sight of moonlight reflecting off a shaved head.

“Blackjack,” he gasped in relief, and pointed.

All it took was a split second’s inattention.

“No!” Halloran shouted.

A pistol went off—had gone off—and by the time Asher cut his eyes across the square, Blackjack was already slipping from his saddle.

Even boosted with steel and copper, Asher’s human legs were still too slow to cover the distance. Halloran reached Blackjack first, gentling his fall before he hit the ground.

“Where is it, where is it—Asher, did you see where—”

“His chest…I think.”

Halloran took him at his word. Fabric tore beneath his hands, baring a near-hairless chest crisscrossed by a plethora of scars. Black blood gushed out of the space beneath his right lowermost rib.

“H-Halloran…” Blackjack raised a trembling hand.

“I got you, buddy. I got you, you’re gonna be fine. You’ll see,” Halloran panted, grimacing as he struggled to widen the wound. Vampire flesh wanted to seal together around the bullet, not knowing that it was silver. Unable to tell the difference between easing pain and sealing the poison inside, where it would spread outward as fast as flame over hooch.

“H-hh…” Convulsions seized Blackjack, agony twisting his features. The hand he’d raised quaked as though it took the very last of his strength to keep it up.

Asher followed its direction. The horse? The saddle? A sawed-off Spencer carbine hung from a strap. Asher seized it and checked the magazine. Seven rounds.

Seven silver-capped rounds.

Blackjack choked on a wet breath and let his arm drop to the ground.

“No. No, no, no… You’re not done yet. I got it out. I got it out!” Halloran grabbed Blackjack by the shirtfront, the silver bullet smoldering in his fist.

Blackjack’s head lolled back, no longer supported. The stench of charred meat filled the air.

“Halloran.” Asher squeezed the rifle with both hands. “Halloran, come on.”

“No, I can bring him back!”

“He’s gone!”

Another shot flew maybe an inch from Asher’s left ear. He heard the bullet slice through the air before it embedded itself into the hitching post.

Blackjack’s horse reared up in fright. Asher made to grab the reins when he saw the shooter on the roof of the saloon. He didn’t think. He took aim with the carbine and squeezed off two rounds.

The first one missed. The second did not.

Asher allowed himself a moment of gratification. But there would be others. If one set of enemies didn’t get them, Malachi’s men would.

“Halloran, we have to go.”

There was no response. He saw why as soon as he turned.

Where Blackjack had been a moment ago now there was only dust, blood and entrails. And Halloran, thrumming with a rage Asher would’ve quite happily died without ever encountering.

“Halloran, please…”

Their eyes met. Halloran bared his fangs.