Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The stairwell down to the bunker was narrow. No cameras, no security and barely any light—just a few naked bulbs hanging by loose wire here and there. We walked single file down the dusty and dirty stairs. Our feet barely made a sound as we took the cracked and broken steps one at a time. I took the lead. Augustus brought up the rear. The bunker was deep underground. The end of the stairway was far in the distance. We were armed to the teeth and invisible to everyone but each other. It was a good combo. The closer we got, the more I could feel Ethan. Martha’s nips were the background music, further proof we were headed in the right direction. Twice, I tried to reach Ethan telepathically, and twice, I failed. Using the butt-book and pen to talk to my people was safer and more reliable. There was some kind of spell here that thwarted communication.

“What are we gonna do about the Dhampirs?” Jane asked softly from behind me. “I mean, if any are down there.”

I paused and turned back to the group. “Don’t kill a Dhampir unless it’s completely necessary,” I instructed. “I want to see if there’s any way to help them.”

Poosh shook her head sadly. “Astrid, with all due respect, there’s no way to help a monster who should have never been created.”

“The monster didn’t ask to be created,” I countered.

“Cooch said that the spell can’t be reversed,” Poosh reminded me. “It’s unwise to attempt to fix what can’t be fixed. Dhampirs are not supposed to exist.”

“Are Vampyres supposed to exist?” I asked in a tight tone. “Demons? Trolls? Fairies? None of us are natural. None of us should exist. In many people’s minds, we’re the monsters.”

“I don’t think it can be undone,” Poosh whispered, wringing her hands.

“I can’t accept that,” I said, flatly remembering the Zombies we’d found not too long ago. They were half-turned innocents. One of them had been the reincarnation of my beloved grandma. If we’d just gone for the kill, it would have been cold-blooded murder. Self-defense was one thing. Murder was entirely another. Instead, we’d turned them fully. It had been disgusting, scary, and worth it. As Tracy had said, nothing worth anything was easy. I knew the Dhampirs weren’t half-turned Vampyres. They were both human and Vamp. I wasn’t sure how to save them, but given the chance, I would try.

I had to. I was the True Immortal known as Compassion. I had many faults. I was materialistic, profane, sarcastic, and prone to setting people on fire—especially Martha and Jane. However, I felt deeply for justice and doing right by innocent people.

“Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it,” I said, effectively ending the conversation. I’d given the order and knew it would be obeyed.

It took ten more minutes of walking to reach the heavy steel door that led to the prize.

“Turn off your fun buttons,” Martha told Jane. “Can’t have our tits talkin’ during a mission.”

“Will do,” Jane whispered, slapping her chest like she was covered in bugs. “Boobala LeJugs, it’s gonna be kind of weird if the bad fuckers are on the other side of the door and it just randomly opens.”

“We’ll be ghosts,” Felix said.

They were both correct. An open door with no one standing on the other side was weird. Weird was working for us so far. I’d already met a ghost on this mission. Stephano, Josephine, Petro and Charlton had met her too… twenty years ago. Cooch was the ghost who helped them get started. We were the ghosts who would end them. Opening the door was tricky, but I didn’t see any other way in.

“Hang on a sec,” Poosh whispered.

The Demon placed her hands on the rusted steel and softly recited a chant in a language I’d never heard. It was strangely melodic and off-putting at the same time. Her body went rigid, and her fingertips glowed red. The door shimmered ever so slightly. It was so marginal I wasn’t sure anything happened at all.

“You all right?” I asked.

She stepped back, nodded, then blew out a long, slow breath. “We’re all good.”

I gave her a quizzical glance.

She grinned. “We can walk through the door now.” When I arched at brow, she added, “A specialty of mine. I’ve turned it into an illusion. It still looks like the door is there, but it’s a facade.”

“Seriously?” I asked, impressed.

“Yep,” she replied with pride. “It’s an excellent skill to have when stealing from bank vaults and high-end stores. Works like a dream. I can walk right in and pilfer millions! Normally, I’d wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, but I didn’t bring any. The illusion will only last for three minutes. We should go now.”

I was speechless. While her abilities were coming in handy, her reasons for having them were terrible.

“At the risk of getting electrocuted,” Augustus announced. “I have a boner.”

“Not a surprise,” I muttered.

I went first. The others followed. It was as if there was no door at all. Poosh was a criminal with mad expertise. I’d make an effort in the future to teach her right from wrong, but right now, I was wildly thankful for her felonious nature.

The bad guys we were looking for were not on the other side of the door, but their handiwork made me ill. My eyes went immediately to Ethan and Lizard. They were alive, but they were not in a good position. Yanking my gaze away from the man I loved gutted me, but to save him, I needed to know what we were up against. To win, I had to divorce my emotions from the situation. I’d done it before. I would do it now. There was too much to lose.

The bunker was larger than the floors above but with a similar layout. It had a cavernous warehouse feel. At the entrance, we stood on a ten-foot steel bridge that separated us from the main area. Underneath us was dark and murky water. What was in it? I didn’t want to guess.

We’d found the security. About thirty well-armed Vampyres lined the perimeter of the space. Their expressions were flat, and I was furious to realize I recognized some of them. The betrayal went deep.

About forty feet above the cement floor was a glass-covered balcony. It spanned the length of the room. My guess was that was where the traitorous leaders were. It looked clean and modern compared to the old and decrepit area where we stood. However, my real concern was what I saw across the bridge on the other side.

Ten human women were strapped to guillotines. Their heads were on the chopping blocks and the sharp blade was perched precariously above. Their arms were tied behind their backs and they were gagged. The women’s eyes were wide with terror. I didn’t blame them. It was a horrific scene. Ethan and Lizard were in chairs facing the women—about twenty feet away. In their mouths, they had rope. The rope was connected to the guillotines. The slightest move from either of them would release the blades and decapitate the terrified women.

“What the fuck kind of animal does something like this?” I muttered under my breath.

A small nudge at my side from Jane alerted me to what I’d missed since I was so focused on Ethan. In glass cages along two sides of the room, and also connected to the ropes that Ethan and Lizard held, were fifty Dhampirs. One in each cage. The age range of the monsters was from twelve years old to maybe fifteen at the most. All were male, and all looked crazed. The boys were malnourished and unkempt. The clothes they wore were torn and blood-stained. Some of the youngest wore only tattered shorts. From where I stood, some appeared to have lash marks on them. My stomach lurched to my throat, and I wanted to scream. They were little boys. I had a son who wasn’t much older. The inhumanity was impossible to comprehend. Dying wouldn’t be enough of a punishment for those who had created the poor souls in the cages.

Again, if Ethan or Lizard moved a muscle, the women would die, and the Dhampirs would be released. The situation was bad. It seemed like a no-win.

I didn’t get the end game. What were they doing? None of this made sense. I stared hard at Ethan. He wasn’t facing me, so he couldn’t see me. I mentally willed him to know I was here. I needed him to know I was near him, that I’d found him. That I would always find him. I had to get close enough to talk to him, but I didn’t want to startle him and set off a chain reaction that would end in a lot of dead innocents.

My knees almost buckled when I saw him move his pinky finger ever so slightly in a circular motion.

“Can you hear me?” I asked him telepathically. My words were filled with desperation. “Can you hear me?” I repeated. “Give me a sign.”

“Barely,” he replied. His voice was far away, but I could make most of it out. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.” A rush of relief and hope surged through me. “I can. Yes. Yes. Yes. I can.”

“I’ll speak,” he said. “It’s Stephano, Josephine, Petro and Charlton. They have back up. Not sure if it’s more than the guards in the room.”

That I already knew, but let him keep going.

“There’s infighting. Stephano wants out.”

My guess was that Stephano was the one who wrote the note. “END GAME?” I asked as loud as I could in my mind.

He didn’t answer. The thread of communication was cut. Didn’t matter. He knew I was here. The question was, what the hell were we going to do now?

Grabbing the pad and pen, I scribbled a note. “When you said that, eventually, the Dhampir will turn on their maker… what did eventually mean?” I shoved the note into Poosh’s hands.

She read it and wrote back. “At puberty. The boys are the right age. We just need the makers.”

“Do you think they know this might happen?” I wrote back. Ethan hadn’t known about Dhampirs turning on their makers. I prayed that the traitorous Vamps weren’t privy to that information either.

Poosh looked at me askance. “No. If the makers are still alive, they have no fucking idea. There’s no way the guards know either. If they did, they wouldn’t be here.”

I nodded my thanks. The boys were definitely at the age of puberty. What I needed were the makers. What I hoped was that the Dhampirs could discern the makers from the human women and Ethan and Lizard. I didn’t give a shit about the guards.

“FUCK,” I wrote. “Why is nothing ever easy?”

Tracy grabbed the pen and paper. “Because it wouldn’t be worth it.”

She was right. I was being whiny. There was no freaking time to bitch. We had work to do. Eyeing the setup, my mind raced. There were seven of us. The guillotines were under the balcony. Unless someone was leaning over the railing, they couldn’t see them. Granted, the guards could see, but their gazes were glued to Ethan and Lizard. Jamming the death machines was the way to go. The risk was high, but our entire existence was built on taking risks. Using magic would be a giveaway that we were here.

But we might not need magic.

“Do you still have the rag magazines?” I wrote and then gave Martha and Jane the pad.

They nodded.

I smiled. “Show me.”

Martha pulled them out of her pants. There were ten. Satan didn’t fuck around…

Quicky, I wrote out bullet point directions. “Five people—Martha, Jane, Poosh, Augustus and Felix. Take two rag mags apiece. Move to the humans. Get between them so you have two women on either side of you. There's space where the rope loops through the hole above the blade. Shove the rag mags into the holes. It will jam the blade so it won’t drop if Ethan and Lizard move. Make sure it’s secure. For good measure, covertly tie a fucking knot in the rope as well. If the paper fails, the knot can be backup.” I held the pad out for my people to read.

“The paper will make noise,” Felix wrote underneath the directive.

Shit, shit, shit. He was right. We couldn’t catch a break if it bit us in the ass.

Poosh held up a finger to draw attention to her. She touched the papers and moved her hands up and down them. When finished, she grabbed the pad and wrote quickly. “Not anymore! I use a silencing method when I’m pilfering from populated places in broad daylight. Normally, I’d use this technique on a hack saw or an oxyacetylene torch to melt metal. It will work perfectly for paper.”

Augustus pointed to his boner. I seriously reconsidered trying to get Poosh to go straight and narrow. She was a gem just the way she was. Who was I to judge if she used her evil ways for good?

“What about the Dhampir cages?” Jane jotted down.

“One thing at a time,” I wrote. “Move now. Get in position, then go to work. I’ll give you a hand signal when it’s go-time.”

Jane grabbed the pad. “Can the hand gesture be a middle-finger salute?”

I rolled my eyes but nodded my head.

My cloaked posse moved like the wind across the bridge and through the room. It took all of ten seconds. Not one guard blinked an eye. When they were in position, I flipped them off. In fact, I gave them a double birdie salute. They worked carefully, methodically and silently. They made me proud.

The women were relatively safe. They didn’t know it yet, but I did and from the active pinky fingers of Ethan and Lizard, they did as well.

Tracy had the notebook. “You do realize we’re on a bridge.”

I looked down and almost laughed. Pam for the win. Her words shot forefront in my mind. ‘Always be willing to burn a bridge when you’re standing on it, but make sure the time is right.’

The time wasn’t right. Not yet.

“I need the makers,” I wrote to Tracy.

As I spoke, I noticed movement behind the glass on the balcony. Charlton and Josephine came into view. They pointed and laughed at Ethan and Lizard. Petro joined them. Only Stephano was missing.

Or was he?

The door opened behind us, and Stephano, followed by six guards, rushed into the room. He passed us on the bridge without noticing anything was amiss. I made a hand motion for my people to stay where they were. Stephano walked at a brisk clip to where Ethan and Lizard sat. The red-headed, purple-eyed Vamp was a nervous wreck. He checked the rope then looked up to the balcony. He couldn’t make eye contact with his Prince. His shame was eating him alive. He didn’t have to worry. He wouldn’t be alive much longer to feel anything.

“She’s gone. We can’t find her,” he shouted.

The glass doors opened, and the other three soon-to-be-dead turncoats stepped out on the balcony and glared at Stephano.

“What do you mean Astrid is gone?” Charlton snarled. “You were supposed to keep track of her and lead her here.”

Charlton looked the same as he had only days ago. He wore his embarrassing black cape and top hat. He was the theory guy. The one with the big and shitty plans for world domination. My favorite of them was the Olympic scheme… He planned for the undead to hold world records in every sport imaginable. In his own tiny mind, he believed this would lead those athletes to get elected into government offices and end with the Vampyres taking over the human population.

He was an imbecile.

Josephine’s icy blondeness was on full display. The abomination wore a blood-red sequined gown and was dressed up like she was going to a gala. She draped her voluptuous body over Charlton and hissed at Stephano.

“You’re on thin ice,” she shouted. “The point was to get her here to watch her lover die. When he dies, she’ll wither, and we will rule the North American Dominion! We knew she would follow the trail. We were correct, and you fucked it up.”

Tracy was scribbling on the notepad. “Is she brain dead? The leadership of our world is hereditary.”

I shook my head. They were all delusional. However, the icy bitch was somewhat correct. I was mated with Ethan. He was my other half by both blood and love. If he were to die, I would become a husk of who I was. As a True Immortal, I could only die by choice. But if Ethan was gone, I had no idea what choice I would make.

Petro joined the conversation. “Stephano, dear man,” he purred while showing fang. “It seems to me like you might want to take a swim.” The kiss-ass sorry excuse for a Vampyre was clearly feeling powerful today. His gaunt and usually pale face was suffused with color. That made horrifying sense when he dragged a mostly dead human man to his mouth and drank him dry. Tossing the body over the balcony, the deceased human landed with a splash in the water beneath the bridge.

The water in the moat below began to churn and move as if bubbling to a rapid boil. But with my Vampyre sight, I could make out what was really happening. “Oh, fuck,” I hissed quietly as I saw the truth of it. Massive piranhas, ones that couldn’t possibly exist without help from science, were devouring the poor man’s body in a feeding frenzy that made me sick to my stomach.

Again, my mind raced. Showing myself at the right time was imperative. A second too early or too late could mean life and death for a lot of people, including my own people.

“Fuck you, Petro,” Stephano shouted. “This was never going to work. It’s ill-conceived and going to get all of us killed.”

“Do you want world domination or not?” Charlton bellowed, making the walls of the bunker tremble.

“I don’t know,” Stephano said tonelessly. “This is all wrong. We’ll never rule the North American Dominion.”

The three Vamps on the balcony elevated into the air before floating down to the floor. Charlton seethed with rage. Petro appeared too satiated to care much. Josephine simply hung off of Charlton, pressing her cleavage against his body. She was in it to win it.

“We have worked centuries for this,” Charlton growled at Stephano. His slimy gaze raked Ethan. “I’ve given that fool multiple non-violent plans for suppressing the human race so we could take our rightful place as superior beings for decades. And while technically, we have no right to rule the territory, we have something better.”

He walked over to one of the cages and lovingly stroked the glass. The Dhampir inside bared his fangs, went ballistic and tried to kill him. Charlton laughed.

“You think you can blackmail the entire Vampyre population with Dhampirs?” Stephano demanded.

“I don’t think… I know,” Charlton shot back coldly. “The threat of releasing fifty killing machines into the world will make them back off long enough for us to break the humans in this Dominion. By then, they’ll have no choice but to follow suit or risk total obliteration. Because of my brilliance, justice will be served, and the Vampyres will take their place as the superior species.”

His plan was sick and deluded. Charlton clearly hadn’t taken into account that they would be hunted like animals for executing his master plan. Wiping the memory of the entire North American human population if the Dhampirs did indeed wreak havoc was iffy, but with the help of the Demons, Fairies, Angels and the Vampyres who didn’t agree with this f-ed up blueprint it could possibly be done.

However, I had no intention of letting it get to that point.

“Can you uncloak only me and leave the rest of the group hidden?” I wrote to the small Vamp who I adored.

“Yes,” she wrote back. “When? Give me a code word.”

I didn’t even have to think about it. “Lord help me, Jesus,” I scribbled.

She grinned like a fool. I grinned right back.

Jotting quickly, I told Tracy to get off the bridge ASAP and position herself near Lizard and Ethan to keep them from moving their heads no matter what happened. She moved quickly and waited. I looked to the rest of my crew, held up five fingers, and then flapped my arms like a bird. Martha and Jane grinned and flipped me off. Working on their manners was a losing proposition. I just returned the favor.

The gals might be crappy fliers, but I was positive they could hover above ground. I watched as they joined hands with Felix, Poosh and Augustus. Without a sound, Martha and Jane flew the quintet about fifteen feet up. They were safe there until I needed them on the floor. I hoped I wouldn’t, but on an ever-changing playground, games tended to get revised.

I closed my eyes and made a priority list in my head. Eliminate guards. Drop a barrier in front of the helpless women so they didn’t get caught in the frey. Pull the ropes from Ethan and Lizard’s mouths. I didn’t have to worry about them once they were free. The rope would release the Dhampirs. I crossed my fingers that my posse had jammed the guillotines. From there I’d let nature take its course.

And after that, I’d figure out the rest.

But first, I had to reveal myself. I stood in the middle of the bridge and centered myself. It was time to end the madness.