The vampires overwhelmed us.
I shuttered despite the sweat running down my face.
Blam.
Muzzle flare erupted from the AR as Gavin fired into the fray.
Blam.
Blam.
Blam.
Gavin blasted vampire after vampire. The gun flashes illuminated the wide open mouths full of dripping fangs seeking our throats. I sent a string of bullets at the dock door decorating it with holes, allowing beams of light to shine through. The vamps hissed but ignored the small circles of light burning their skin, almost like tolerating being burned with a magnifying glass.
There were more than I expected. Gavin got too close to the edge of the light. A couple of vamps latched onto the AR, wrestling my brother for control. When they couldn’t rip it from his hands, they tugged him into the dark and dogpiled him.
“Gavin!”
I was afraid to fire into the pile and hit my brother. Images of my dad walking around on all fours, and trying to eat out of a dog bowl filled my mind’s eye. It was degrading. And these vamps had joined forces with the Dearg Due, lending her strength in numbers. They were in part to blame for my dad’s current state. And now they were trying to take my brother out. I got emotionally charged. So what if that’s how I became my strongest? It worked.
My Good Luck welled up within me spreading from my chest to my hands. I spun, building momentum into a wild tae kwon do kick combo. Emerald knots streamed behind my legs accentuating my charged limbs. I kicked with enough force that I felt bones crunching beneath my feet. I flung the bloodsuckers off my brother’s body, digging to the bottom of the pile.
Even though my magically imbued martial arts made me stronger, lethal even, the vampires healed fast. As I pulled vampires off and tossed them from us, they crawled back with renewed vigor. Bloodlust controlled their sickening appetites, putting them in a frenzy, a manic state, desperate for one thing. Our blood. The outcome was death, or transformation. I couldn’t be turned into a vampire. Already learned that a few weeks ago. But I did fear getting bit and turning into a Ban-he again. An inversion of myself, hell-bent on the destruction of me, my friends, and all of my enemies waited deep beneath the surface.
Spewing bullets from the pistol one-handed, I also blasted the vamps with the Luck magic from my glowing green hand. Again the immediate vicinity around us was sporadically lit by muzzle flare.
Clawed hands reached for my neck, my jacket, my arms, pulled me to the ground, and attempted to rip me to shreds. On the way down I spotted my brother and wanted to sigh with relief, except for now I was the target of the crazy leeches. I welled up a Good Luck blast and aimed at the dock door. Raw emerald energy connected with the metal and the magic won the fight, blasting clean through the dock door.
A huge cannon shot of sunlight beamed into the warehouse catching the vampires directly in front of me. I sweep kicked, clearing the ground around me. Vamps dropped to the cement, bathed in sunlight. I fired the Glock until I ran out of ammo and tucked the gun away as I switched to Fragarach. I knew from past experience that the warehouse sat right on the edge of a body of water running directly into the bay.
I channeled my Good Luck through Fragarach and tapped into the sword’s own abilities. I’m not sure how it all worked exactly. Perhaps I’d be able to wield the sword’s power without the use of my Good Luck, but I took no chances. All I knew was a large tendril of water left the bay and poured in through the tinted warehouse windows above.
An explosion of glass sent shards raining down as a stream of water thicker than a redwood log weaved in from outside. I directed the stream with the tip of the sword point and wove it around my brother and I. It crashed into the remaining vampires with a force stronger than several fire trucks. The current caught them like a flash flood, forcing them through the splintered dock door and into the morning light. Hissing screams of agony filled my ears as the sun scorched their bodies, turning them to ashes in mere moments.
“Dang, that was efficient,” I muttered.
“More,” said Gavin.
“What?”
“I need more. More of them need to pay for what happened to Dad.”
We’d probably ended just fifteen to twenty vamps. I had no idea how many there were.
As if on cue further in the back of the warehouse a door burst open on top of a balcony and more vampire goons rushed into the room toward us. I reloaded the Glock with another extended mag.
“Stop them,” commanded a familiar voice. “Don’t let them get to the queen.”
The vampire giving the commands practically glowed in the dark, his skin was so white. Count Pale. At least that’s what I called him. Of all the vamps, he dressed like what people usually thought modern vampires should wear, with his fancy business suit and dress shoes. I actually thought he’d died under the devastating strike Tain had laid on him. But the scars the scoring his face told me he’d only been put down temporarily. The wizard had classified him as a Dracula-level vamp, which I assumed meant he was no joke. He definitely had a more impressive wingspan that the younger vampires lacked.
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Between us and the vampires closing in there was a row of skylight windows along the ceiling, the kind Batman likes to drop into from above. Batman would not be saving us anytime soon, but it gave me an idea that could turn the tide in our favor.
I shot the Glock at each window in one row, creating islands of light and shattered glass on the warehouse floor, pockets of protection that me and my brother could move to as we crossed the warehouse to confront the leeches. Gavin used the AR to take out another row of tinted glass.
Instinctively we both switched back to Kenjutsu, running side by side as we dashed at our enemies, swords trailing behind us ready to deliver kill strokes.
We clashed on the small wave of vampires like a two-man army meeting the enemy head on. Except for this was a one-sided conflict. Though we were terribly outnumbered, our swords minced the vampire flesh like we were chopping away at ballistics gel. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible. They weren’t guaranteed to die under our blades alone, but the amount of sunlight pouring in from the dock door and the now shattered skylights was sure to finish what we started. My brother and I left a carnage of sliced and diced enemies in our wake.
Count Pale lept from the balcony. His wings folded up behind him like a leather cape. With a swift spin step, Gavin hurled Jade like a spear. The katana soared true and pierced the pale vamp right through wings. The blade sank deep into a wooden crate so that Count Pale hung suspended, unable to reach the floor, but unable to free himself without tearing his wings off.
Spittle flew from his lips as he screamed and tried to break free. He swung clawed hands at us, but Gavin put a few rifle shots in him. We ignored him and moved through the door that the vampires poured out of in the first place. Brothers in arms, we ascended upstairs to the higher levels of the building lair just like I had a few days ago with Charice, Rob, and Nehemiah.
Nehemiah. Why did my thoughts turn to the wizard so often? Probably because he had a big impact on my life in ways that were all too clear to me now. I really just didn’t want to think about him though. I didn’t want to deal with the ambiguity. Was he my enemy? Was he a friend? Neutral? I didn’t know how to treat him and that’s what made me enraged the most.
Though I hated to admit it, it was obvious that Nehemiah had my best interests in mind the entire time we had been working together. Heck, the guy had teamed up with my girlfriend not two and a half weeks ago to save me from the clutches of my dark Ban-he self, plus the Fetch impersonating me. And if it weren’t for Nehemiah, I wouldn’t even know that my dad was still alive at all.
But I had to fight Nehemiah almost to death to find that out. Friend? How could I even question that? Of course the guy wasn’t my friend. He had tried to kill my dad. Or at least he gave Dad up to be killed. He’d sold my dad out. Maybe in his sick and twisted mind he had a good reason, but obviously it bothered him enough to erase the memories from his mind.
If a serial killer fell into a coma and woke up a different person because their memory was wiped clean, would that be any different than the situation I was dealing with now? Nope. It wouldn’t. That serial killer would still be culpable for all the horrendous acts they did, whether or not their current state of mind made them recoil from their own previous actions. And that was what I needed to remember the most about Nehemiah. He was still culpable for his past actions. The real question at hand, was it my job, my duty to avenge my father?
“On your left,” yelled Gavin, bringing me back to the here and now.
A vampire dropped down from the ceiling and landed a few steps from me.
I pulled the trigger and the Glock recoiled in my hand three times.
Bop.
Bop.
Bop.
Had Gavin not warned me about it I wouldn’t have really noticed until it was too late. Lo and behold, it was my favorite pal Oscar the gang banger from Raza del Norte. He wore a bloodstained t-shirt and plaid long sleeve draped over, only the very top buttoned at the collar. The blood probably wasn’t his. He was a vampire now, on top of being a gangster. So his bloodlust from his criminal days was now fully realized.
I grabbed him by the collar of his T-shirt and shoved the gun into his chest, pulling the trigger several more times for good measure. I walked him back into the wall slamming his hissing head hard against the concrete.
Even though Gavin was alive, I’d never forget how this guy tried to slay my brother just to get at me. There were no windows anywhere near us, no possibility of sunlight bursting through and burning this thug. He wouldn’t die, but from the faraway look in his pupils, the pain of searing hot lead passing completely through his body registered just fine.
“You’ll live buddy. These aren’t silver bullets.”
I kneed him in the groin. He let out a groaning hiss. He left a trail of crimson as he slid down the wall and slumped back panting heavily.
We continued moving higher up into the warehouse lair.
Before I knew it we had trespassed into the Dearg Due’s throne room. I expected her to be seated with a scowl on her face, irritated to have to deal with the O’Farrell brothers herself. I expected her to sick Diarmuid on us again and I’d have a round two showdown with my favorite son of Donn the Red. If the guy was even still alive. I might have killed him in our last encounter. I was assuming a lot of things. They were all wrong. There was nobody in the throne room. It was totally empty.
“Where is she?” asked Gavin.
“Not here.”
I wasn’t satisfied with the emptiness. The only things here in the room were the throne and the blood basin, erected in the center of the room like a testament to the breaking of my mind, my trust in Nehemiah.
Emerald Celtic knots shot out of my hands. The strands wove around the throne like green serpents. I picked up the throne and smashed it into the blood basin, splintering the throne into a million pieces, and left the basin broken and toppled. My frustrated yell echoed through the throne room.
I gazed down the side hall, but Tain and I had brought that room toppling down on Diarmuid. It was a dead end. Excuse me, Dad and I. It was still weird reframing all of my memories with Tain so that Dad was the one there at my side the whole time. Calling him Tain in my memories just made it easier.
“Live to kill another day guess,” said my brother.
My fingers ran through my hair. “That’s not good enough. She’s caused enough trouble. She needs to be taken out.”
On instinct, Gavin and I scanned the ceiling trying to spot the upside down hanging sky rat who could smother us under her ebony leather wings, but the heights of the vaulted roof were too dark for the human eye to make out anything.
A cackle echoed in the darkness above.
She was there after all.