CHAPTER 15
Charles and the Guard advanced, pushing aside the milling vampires on the arena floor. It had to be all of the Guard — the entire contingent, all in one place.
“Guards,” said Charles, “please take the Deacon and the pretty woman behind him into custody so that we can kill them as painfully as possible. If they resist, go ahead and kill them outright. Maurice may be old, but he can’t take on all of you.”
It was true. Real life wasn’t like a kung fu movie, where attackers were kind enough to come on one or two at a time. If the Guard all came for Maurice, he might kill a few of them but then would be overwhelmed.
The Guard captain next to Charles said something to him.
Charles replied, loud enough for the whole room to hear, “Don’t worry about the fat one. I’d like to handle that bit of unpleasantness myself.” He reached behind his back and retrieved something that he then held in his fist like a threat. Reginald looked closer. It was a sharpened wooden stake.
Then, in one blurring motion, Charles struck. He didn’t precisely jump from the arena floor up to the Deacon’s box. It was more like he was fired from the floor. He struck Reginald in the chest, and his momentum threw the Charles/Reginald ball toward the back of the box. Maurice and Nikki turned to react, but the Guard were already advancing, climbing the stands and the walls and the catwalks above like swarming spiders. Maurice’s head twitched in the dozen directions from which the Guard were coming, but there was nothing to do as they slowly surrounded him. They were taking their time. Maurice and Nikki were pinned in place. Any one of them could strike at any time.
And then something worse began to happen. The rest of the vampires in the arena began to rise behind the Guard. They got to their feet; they marched slowly up the steps and through the stands. Reginald could hear every seat creaking, every body stirring. Every one of the hundreds of vampires in the building was coming at them. And every vampire on Fangbook was watching, surely betting on who would die first.
Charles effortlessly pinned Reginald to the floor with one hand. Reginald’s strength was no match for Charles’s. Charles didn’t hesitate. He raised the spike, eyeing Reginald’s face and then a spot in the middle of his chest.
“Maurice and I made you, our little mistake, together,” said Charles. “But the difference is that I’m willing to admit my mistake and correct it.” And then he drove the stake home, into Reginald’s heart.
But when the stake struck Reginald’s chest, it shredded into thousands of tiny bits. Charles’s fist became a forest of splinters — some large and some small — and he screamed.
“Seriously,” said Reginald. “I’m the first vampire to ever think of this?” He raised the bottom of his shirt to show Charles the chain mail vest that he, like Nikki and Maurice, had been wearing for months. Then, focusing all of his strength into his arms, he gave a shove and rolled his superior girth onto his attacker, pinning Charles beneath him. Charles was strong, but he weighed half of what Reginald weighed and was at a temporary disadvantage, too pained by the hundreds of wood shards in his fist to react.
Then, to buy himself a few more seconds, Reginald kneed Charles in the testicles.
He focused on the chaos around him.
Everything stopped. The arena became a still-life.
Reginald looked around, knowing that what felt like movement of his head was just a trick of perception. He saw it all. He filed and processed the position of every one of the hundreds of people in the room. Within his awareness, he had all the time he’d need to analyze it. He could see every piece of the massive, interlocking puzzle that the Council under the Asbury had become.
The closest Guards were fifteen feet from Maurice. None had weapons. Weapons would get in the way. If there were still snipers at the ring of windows around the top of the arena, they might fire, but their chain mail vests made the wooden bullets irrelevant. The Guards, on the other hand, would simply use their hands and teeth to tear Maurice’s head off — something the chain mail did nothing to prevent. Maurice would be able to take down a few of them, but there were already seven within striking distance and two distinct waves behind them.
In Reginald’s still-life, the Guard at the front of the advancing pack had his hands hooked into claws. His fangs were out, the tips wet with blood. Maurice was standing his ground, his feet planted, his arms out, ready to spring in any direction. But which direction? Two Guards were coming from his right, two were coming from his left, and one was directly in front of him. One Guard was advancing from behind, and there was even one in the rafters, preparing to drop from above.
Nikki didn’t seem to be the primary target, but she was right next to Maurice. The eyes of at least one of the Guard were on her. Her own eyes, interestingly, were on Reginald. No matter where he seemed to move in his still-life, her eyes seemed to follow him like a trick painting. She must be actually looking right at him, wherever they were relative to each other in real time. He could see fear in her eyes, but it wasn’t fear for herself. It was fear for Reginald. He looked back to what the moment had been before he’d entered hyper-awareness. Reginald had just rolled over onto Charles. It couldn’t have been more than five seconds earlier that Charles had tried to stake him.
Nikki’s eyes on his. His eyes looking into Nikki’s.
Reginald suddenly felt angry. It was a hot, indignant kind of anger, totally unlike the panicky, tantrum-style anger that he usually felt. And with that thought, he realized that what he was feeling wasn’t his own anger. He was feeling Nikki’s anger, just as she sometimes felt the thirst of others in her bloodline.
What you’re feeling is blood ties, Maurice had told her.
Reginald tried to focus on Nikki, on her blood, on his own blood, on the bond that they shared as maker and progeny.
Nikki, he thought. Extend your index finger.
Reginald allowed his mental focus to slip. The still-life around him ground slowly forward, like a carousel on a rusty spindle. The Guard who were advancing at human speeds in real time moved now at a pace that was barely perceptible. Two vampires in the distance who’d run for the door looked as if they were jogging, but were doing so with the posture of sprinters. Maurice’s head had been flicking around as he watched the Guard approach, and Reginald saw it now as if Maurice were in a very interesting art gallery. He looked here, there, up, down.
At the end of Nikki’s right hand, her index finger flicked out like the blade on a switchblade.
Reginald focused, and again the world ground to a halt.
He thought. Fortunately, he had all the time in the world to do it.
You’re trapped, said an internal voice. The fact that you can analyze every detail of your trap changes nothing.
And that was totally true. If a Guard came at him, Reginald could stop and think about it for as long as he wanted, but the moment he stopped concentrating, his internal clock would sync with reality and the Guard would be on him. He hadn’t gotten any faster or stronger. If he tried to run, he’d easily be overtaken.
Nikki and Maurice, on the other hand, were strong and fast. If they were able to do what he could do with his mind, they’d be able to pause to analyze, then resume and react, then repeat. But they couldn’t.
There has to be a way to use this.
How? said the skeptical voice. You’ll only be able to watch in excruciating detail as all of you are overtaken and die.
Reginald closed his eyes, which in itself was a mental device because in reality, his eyes were open. He focused on Nikki, feeling her in his veins like a presence within him. And he thought, Nikki. Behind you, to your right side, three feet from Maurice’s left arm, there’s a Guard with his hands high, about to jump. Come in low, below his arms.
Reginald, getting the feel for this time-stop concentration thing, defocused and watched as everything ground to slow life around him. A Guard to Maurice’s right came another step forward. The running vampires near the entrance vanished through the door. Nikki swiveled with surprising speed, squatted like a boxer coming in for an uppercut, and drove her fist through the chest of the advancing Guard.
Reginald focused, and everything stopped. He could see Nikki’s knuckles emerging from the Guard’s back, but what was spraying out wasn’t blood. It was grayer, and there were sparks. Then Reginald remembered that Nikki wore an African ring on that hand, which was carved out of polished wood.
Reginald made a mental note that another must-have item for the well-equipped vampire soldier of today would be wooden knuckles, not unlike brass knuckles.
Maurice’s head had turned, despite the dozens now advancing on him. His brows were furrowed. The expression on his face was one of curiosity, as if he’d heard a noise he couldn’t explain.
Maurice, pick me up.
Although Reginald was the brain, he was none of the brawn. If he was to participate in this lopsided battle, he’d need to do it as a backpack worn by someone who was much faster than he was.
Time resumed. Maurice turned and, without hesitation, came to where Reginald was laying and hoisted him over one shoulder as if he weighed nothing at all. Even at the glacial pace Reginald was allowing, Maurice’s movement was blurred.
Jesus, is he fast.
Time stopped.
Nikki, come with us, he thought.
She turned.
It’s a game of chess — just a very big, very complex game of chess, Reginald thought. Assess the pieces. Anticipate the moves of hundreds of simultaneous opponents twenty steps in advance. Win, or die.
They began to make their way down the front stairway. It was tempting to tell Maurice to jump to the arena floor, but the pauses and slow-downs were an illusion that existed solely within Reginald’s mind. Nothing was actually stopping or slowing, and the same laws as ever applied in real time. One of those laws said that vampires were much faster than gravity. In the time it would take for them to fall through the air and land, they could have twenty Guards on them.
The process required tremendous concentration and was incredibly stressful. Reginald couldn’t hear the others because they couldn’t think as fast as he could, so he was on his own to mastermind their fight and hopeful escape. It felt like he was moving pieces around inside of a giant diorama, but he could only go forward, never backward. The relative speeds and strength of all three of them still applied. He had to make guesses and anticipate where others were moving, but if they got backed into a corner, they’d still be backed into a corner — no matter how slowly it happened.
Reginald sweated each move. The pause-think-resume-act cycle made it easier to see what to do, but whether opportunities presented themselves or not still depended a lot on luck. The walls could easily still close in, and if they did, it might actually be more terrible to watch them close in slowly than it would have been in real time.
Ahead of them, two vampires — roughnecks who were not Guard, and who looked like recently turned members of a biker gang, were crouched in their way. Reginald had been watching them. In a second, they’d spring forward, launching themselves in the air at Maurice and Nikki’s necks. Evading them was as simple. Reginald told Maurice to drop him, then to grab him by the leg and drag him. He told both Maurice and Nikki to go onto their hands and knees and scamper forward, staying low. By the time the pair jumped, Maurice and Nikki were already on the floor, moving underneath them with Reginald in tow. The vampires soared harmlessly above them. Reginald had time to notice paired looks of perplexity on their faces. Then Maurice hoisted Reginald onto his back and resumed running.
They dodged. They evaded. Heads were pulled off. As long as they could keep space around them, they’d be okay. A halo of three feet was enough to maneuver as long as no more than two or three vampires were ever inside of it. Maurice was fast enough to outrun any claw or fang, and even Nikki, who was millennia younger, had been born with enough prowess to punch through two attackers in the time it would take one to strike her, as long as she knew exactly where to strike, how to strike, and when.
Reginald steered them through tangles of arms and bodies, propelled them over scrums, turned them into precision weapons.
Then Reginald remembered Maurice’s sword. He wore it all the time unless it was taken from him, and the Guard hadn’t taken it today because the Guard had deserted their posts.
Maurice unsheathed his weapon.
Choke up on it, thought Reginald.
There wasn’t enough room in the crowd to swing a sword without getting tangled and losing time to the momentum of big swings, so Maurice grabbed the sword in its middle, his hand immediately cutting and bleeding crimson against its razor edge. He gripped it tightly, the blade stopping and anchoring once it became wedged in bone. Then he started to swing it with one hand like a double-ended axe, slicing and swiping with both ends.
The handle on one end of the sword was unwieldy, so Maurice broke it off as simply as snapping a twig. Then, even in a life-and-death situation, even while they were outnumbered by more than a hundred to each of their one, Reginald had to laugh inside of his head as he watched Maurice swing with one hand while using the other to stow the handle of the sword in his pants pocket, so that he could have it fixed later if they survived.
It would normally have been impossible for Maurice, even as fast as he was, to deliver perfect neck shots with each swipe of the sword, but Reginald guided him through each swing, having him adjust higher or lower, far end up or far end down, even once he’d begun to strike. Each time a head came off, gravity took over. Because gravity was the slowest force in the room, they had to dodge what looked like stationary, floating heads as they cut through the crowd. Reginald decided that clearing heads was something he could handle, even as slow as he was. So from atop Maurice’s shoulders, he began using his own glacial hands to slap them away as they began to flake into dust. As he did, Reginald made a mental note to watch the video of this if they made it out alive. In real time, what they were doing had to look like vegetables being fed into a food processor.
There was a knot of vampires in front of them. Too many to cut through. They were too dense, without sufficient room to cut or strike or evade. Reginald’s mind looked to the left. A gap was closing. He looked to the right, which opened into the Council room. That way was clear, but it would be a dead end, and in the opposite direction from the exit. They couldn’t go inside the room unless they wanted to make a last stand using the door as a bottleneck. Reginald did a quick mental calculation. There were still too many of them left. Their chances of killing all of the vampires that remained, even in a bottleneck, were nil. And what was more, Reginald’s mind was getting tired. He willed himself into focus, but he couldn’t sustain this level of concentration for much longer.
He told Maurice and Nikki to turn left, skirting the crowd. They did. He looked right and saw the wall of vampires. He looked left, now back toward the stands and the Deacon’s box, and saw scores cascading down from the seats and rafters. They’d been running for three to five seconds in real time — plenty long enough for everyone to catch on, and plenty long enough for all of those interested in fighting to fight.
The gaps in front of them were beginning to close.
Reginald’s mind looked backward, wondering if the open door to the Council room was the wisest choice after all. But even now, it might be too late.
A young-looking vampire came in from the right, his hands up and reaching for Reginald, his fangs out. In the same moment, a female vampire was crouched on the floor in front of them. A third had its hands two feet from Nikki.
He told Maurice to strike the closest vampire and told Nikki exactly where and how to disarm the crouching one with a kick. Time rolled forward. All three vampires advanced. The leaping one leapt. Nikki struck it below the chin hard enough to open a stress wound in its neck. Maurice took out the one on his right with his blade. The third advanced a foot, its fingers now very near Nikki’s neck.
Nikki, turn to your left! thought Reginald. Strike with your left hand!
But her left hand was at her side, and would never make it in time. He changed his order.
Duck!
Time inched forward. The clawed hands came closer. Maurice, having finished his kill, turned. The one Nikki had kicked now had a red line at its neck, its head snapped far enough to touch its head to its back. It’s body was arched in the air, starting to flip.
Reginald told Maurice what to do, but Maurice’s hands and blade were still to his right.
Reginald thought. All he could do was to wait and see if Maurice could make it, or if Nikki could duck in time.
He inched time forward.
Nikki ducked a few inches, but the vampire was descending on her, and its attack arc followed her ducking motion. Maurice was fast, but not fast enough — and thanks to Nikki and her attacker’s downward motion, he would strike too high if he got there in time to strike at all.
Reginald told Nikki to turn away. He tried to kick at the attacker himself.
Time inched forward. The hands touched Nikki’s neck. From where Reginald was atop Maurice’s shoulders, he could do nothing but watch helplessly.
Everything stopped.
Nikki was going to die. There was nothing he could do. Nothing Nikki could do. Nothing Maurice could do.
A small opening had begun to form in front of them, and beyond the opening was the door to the exit. If Maurice’s next move took him forward, he might be able to make it through. But that would mean leaving Nikki behind.
In timelessness, Reginald looked at Nikki. He pondered. He calculated. He prayed.
There was nothing he could do.
It took him a long, long time to reach the inescapable conclusion that either she would die alone or they would all die together. So with great, great, sorrowful reluctance, he commanded Maurice to move toward the exit.
But when time rolled forward again, something massive struck Nikki’s attacker from the rear and the encroaching vampire flew away, fast and hard enough even in slow-time to strike the far wall and break into pieces like a ceramic doll. Reginald couldn’t bring himself to stop; he allowed his awareness to inch forward so that he could watch it happen.
The massive thing coming up from behind was Brian Nickerson, who was making a berserker run from the Council chamber toward the door.
Reginald had always imagined that Brian must be incredibly powerful given his six-foot-seven, three-hundred-plus pound body made of pure muscle, and he wasn’t disappointed. Vampirism had magnified Brian’s already-Herculean strength and the surprising speed and agility he’d spent hours each day honing. Brian moved like a wide receiver and cleared bodies like a lineman. He was cutting through the crowd like a train, his head down, his powerful arms tossing bodies aside as if they were tufts of dust. Nothing could stand in his way.
Brian was shameless in his self-preservation. As he stormed forward, Reginald could see that he was holding one of his Council rivals in front of him. His makeshift shield was slashed, cut, bitten, ripped. And when that vampire was mostly spent, Brian started to use him as a club, swinging him around with one hand while he used the other to throw bodies aside.
Reginald didn’t waste any time. He directed Nikki and Maurice into Brian’s wake, before it closed again with teeth and claws.
Once they were in the corridor, things became easy. Reginald unclenched his tired mental muscles and began watching as things happened in real time. They went up the stairs and through the unguarded lobby. In the blur of a second, they were at the front door. He’d already lost track of Brian, who hadn’t so much as looked back. Reginald did look back, slowing time in his mind to do so. The others were coming up from the basement, pouring through the stairwell door and into the Asbury’s main room like ocean water rushing through the hull of a sinking ship.
Underneath Reginald, Maurice had stopped. His toe tapped nervously. Nikki was beside them, all three fleeing vampires standing on four feet just past the front door, at the apron of tile in the club’s front lobby.
The sun had risen.
It was still low in the sky, casting long shadows across High Street, but the campus buildings to the east side of the road were low, and the shadows wouldn’t make for sufficient cover. Sunlight streamed halfway into the Asbury’s lobby like a welcome mat made of death. Brian must have run right out into it. If he could find shelter nearby, he might be fine because he was still young. Reginald and Nikki, in theory, could do the same. It would hurt like hell and they wouldn’t be able to see where they were going after a while because they’d be blind, but they could do it. Reginald had accidentally fried himself when he was first turned. It had hurt, but a short bout in the sun wouldn’t kill a young vampire if he could find shelter quickly and heal.
Maurice, on the other hand, would turn to ash inside of a second.
The vampires from the basement were almost on them. It was a choice between the fat and the fire.
“Nikki,” said Reginald. “Take my arms.”
She looked down, confused. Reginald had stepped off of Maurice’s back and now stood behind him, one hand around each of Maurice’s sides, under his armpits. Maurice was short, so Reginald had to crouch to get under his armpits at all.
Nikki took his hands. Reginald then told her to grip higher up on him, so she grabbed his upper arms. Then, when Maurice was between them with their arms gripping each other, she understood. So did Maurice.
“Wait,” said Maurice. “No. Don’t.”
Reginald squeezed Nikki’s arms and they both stood up. Maurice hung between their interlocked arms like baggage. Reginald pulled them closer together, creating a Maurice sandwich with Reginald and Nikki bread. Then he rotated them all, turning his back toward the Asbury’s front door.
“Come on, you bloodsucker!” he shouted at Maurice. “You wanna live forever?” Then he stepped out into the sun, back first.
The pain was immediate and intense. Reginald didn’t understand what brought on his painless state when it came, but he knew that appearances occasionally to the contrary, it wasn’t under his conscious control. It wasn’t coming now, possibly because he was so exhausted. He could feel every particle of himself beginning to bubble and boil. It was much worse than last time, either because the sun was more direct or because he’d gotten older.
Nikki screamed as a ray stuck her face, creating an immediate welt. Reginald, with all his size, cast a large westward shadow, but it wasn’t enough. They had to move, or else they’d die in order — men first.
The vampires from the lobby had reached the demarcation line drawn by the sun. They all stopped, watching the smoking trio in the sun, aghast. Not one of them stepped forward. They wanted the Deacon’s blood, but not this badly. In the crowd, Reginald spotted the head of Charles, who looked equally furious and shocked.
“Any time now, Nikki!” said Reginald.
She stopped screaming, made an apologetic noise, then tensed up and arched her back. Reginald felt his feet come off of the ground. The tension between their arms increased as her muscles took on his and Maurice’s weight. Between them, his arms catching sidelong glances of sun and turning black, Maurice groaned.
Then Nikki ran — moving sideways and backward as needed, keeping Reginald’s massive and blistering back to the rising sun.