Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Read online

  “And aware of the contract clause?” she asked.

  “I might manage to work it into the conversation.” Ben sighed. In the background, she could hear kids arguing over cereal flavors and a breakfast show TV host talking about a festival happening in the Mission District over the weekend.

  “The detective investigating the body in my living room isn’t sympathetic,” she added. “He’ll drag his heels over this.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said heavily. “Until you’re officially cleared of any charges, I can’t let you back in through security. You know why. You’re working with highly classified information every day.”

  “I know.”

  “Think of it as vacation time,” Ben said. “I don’t think you’ve taken a real vacation in years.” He hung up.

  Rory put the phone down slowly.

  “Fired?” Dante repeated cautiously.

  “Suspended. It’s a security thing.” She pressed her lips together. “So much for playing by the rules. Corbin used them against me.”

  “Sticking to the rules is the only sensible strategy,” Dante reminded her.

  “Until there is a benefit in breaking them that outweighs the consequences.” It was basic game theory and Corbin Parish was as well versed in game theory as she was.

  Dante grimaced. “I just realized. Training camp. It’s media day there, too.”

  Rory sighed. “There goes our breakfast.”

  Dante pushed the tablet away from him. “What are you going to do?” he asked curiously.

  She considered it. “Corbin will win this game if I stay on the board. He’s aiming to pay me back for dumping him, so he outed me in the most public way possible. The body in my living room ensured the media would pick it up and bray the news across the bay. They’ll do it for as long as I’m in the city.” She looked up at Dante. “I have to get off the board.”

  “Leave town? Will the police let you do that?”

  “If they know where I’m going to be. There’s someone next to Detective Plank who will lean on him to make sure he doesn’t say no just to make my life difficult,” she said, thinking of Christine Perugia.

  “So you’re going to run away?” Dante asked. There was no judgement in his voice. No disapproval.

  “I’m going to step off this board and onto another one. The Summanus are everywhere, Dante. I can kill them in Los Angeles as well as I can kill them here.”

  “You’re going to L.A.?”

  “There’s a man I know, there. A vampire.” She picked up her phone. “Nathanial Aquila Valerius Aurelius.”

  “Sounds Roman.”

  “He is.”

  “Sounds familiar, too,” Dante added. “Has he been on the news, as well?”

  Rory dialed. “He has, but not for draining humans. If there is a vampire you could call the leader of the resistance against the Summanus, he’s the one you’d be pointing at.”

  Chapter Two

  Marcus stepped away from the body with the elongated, bony head and shook his head. “I’m a chemist, Rick. How the hell am I supposed to know what killed it? It’s dead. End of story.”

  Cyneric straightened up from his slump against the wall. He had been standing with his arms crossed and one shoulder pressed against the wall, waiting for Marcus to complete his inspection of the Ĉiela body the local police had brought to the cottage that afternoon. “The village see us as experts,” he said, his tone patient, in contrast to Marcus’ seething frustration over being dumped with a body that he had no idea what to do with.

  “And the cops found this where?” Marcus asked, looking down at the thing. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female. No one knew much about the Ĉiela, except they were dying, unable to survive without their god leader, An.

  “At the bottom of Marshall Brown’s hay field.”

  “That fetid little swamp? They didn’t wonder if the stench is what killed it?” Marcus leaned closer and sniffed. “Phew.”

  The door to the little kitchen pushed inward and Ilaria strode in, to come to a halt with her hand to her nose. “Oh my God!” she cried, waving her other hand in front of it. “It stinks in here!”

  “No kidding,” Marcus breathed.

  She came a half step closer and looked up at him. “You have to get it out of here. I’m not kidding. You can’t leave a dead body on my kitchen table. It’s unsanitary!”

  “I tend to agree,” Rick said evenly. “We can phone and tell them to come and collect the thing. They can hand it in to the police morgue at Stow.”

  “Then why did you accept delivery in the first place?” Marcus asked.

  Rick shrugged. “I was curious. I’ve never seen one up close. I wanted to see the details.”

  “That brain of yours is going to get you killed one day,” Ilaria muttered.

  “Most likely,” Rick agreed.

  “Because I’ll be the one who kills you,” Ilaria added. “Call them now. Now. I want it gone!”

  Rick smiled. He put his hand on Marcus’ shoulder, heavy and reassuring. The long fingers squeezed. “I’m sorry,” he said, speaking to them both.

  Marcus shrugged. “I probably would have wanted to look, too. Only, looking isn’t telling us anything other than it’s dead and it doesn’t look even remotely human. I don’t even know if this thing is armor or some sort of carapace.” He pointed at the rigid breast plate. “Not without a lab full of equipment. Now that would tell us things.”

  “They’re very tall, aren’t they?” Ilaria said, tilting her head to look at the head and feet, which were both hanging off the end of the table by quite a bit.

  From the front room of the cottage came an loud shattering of glass and a series of heavy thuds.

  All three of them jumped.

  Rick turned Ilaria toward the back door she had just come through. “Out,” he said quietly. “No arguments. We’ll slow them down. Head for the village. Ask Peter Guinness for one of his rooms.” Peter Guiness ran the local pub.

  Ilaria’s eyes were wide. She nodded. “Be careful.” She stretched up on her toes and kissed him quickly. Then she moved toward Marcus.

  “No time,” Rick said sharply. “There are six of them in the living room now.”

  Marcus gave her a grim smile. “Later,” he promised.

  Ilaria nodded and hurried to the door. Rick locked it behind her. The Summanus were often puzzled by simple things such as locks and bolts, while showing a deep understanding of more complex ideas like politics and human community structures. They knew how to find the most populated human centers without scouting, too.

  Marcus looked at Rick. “Engage them, or wait?” He pulled out his main gun, which was loaded with Pyrrhus bullets.

  Rick reached under his jacket and pulled out the knife he preferred. “Engage. It’ll keep them busy and give Ilaria time to get away.” He moved even as he was speaking, heading for the closed door that separated the kitchen, a more modern add-on, from the rest of the cottage.

  Beyond the door was what had once been a wood storage room but was now the hallway where the stairs to the upper floor began and from where doors to all the main floor rooms could be accessed. The door that had been added to the living room, nearly a century ago, had been removed in a more recent renovation, when efficient central heating and windows had been installed, making sealing off the warmth in a single room no longer necessary.

  Because of the open doorway, as soon as Rick wrenched the kitchen door open, they could see straight into the big living room that took up the whole front of the house. The Summanus had caved in all four of the big, lead-lined windows. Rick had counted the thuds of bodies hitting the floor accurately. There were six of them digging up the old Persian rug with their sharp toes, their bony heads almost scraping the ceiling.

  More were coming in the windows.

  Marcus fired off three shots, taking careful aim. The Pyrrhus bullets took a lot of work to produce and he didn’t like to waste them.

  Three of the Summanus droppe
d to the rug and writhed, making the strained, high-pitched sound everyone figured was their version of screaming in pain. The Summanus bodies were too filled with mucous for the Pyrrhus to do more than burn away their insides. The Summanus didn’t explode into flames the way vampires and humans did, yet it was clear the Pyrrhus hurt like hell and that was fine by him.

  In reaction to Marcus’ shots, the still-standing Summanus turned and lunged toward them. With their long legs, they crossed the living room in two big strides.

  “Split up!” Rick shouted, pushing Marcus toward the cellar door. He leapt for the stairs.

  Under normal circumstances, heading for a dead end like a basement would make no sense. However, they were trying to give Ilaria time to get away. Splitting the Summanus up this way left fewer for each of them to deal with. Plus, both the basement and the rooms upstairs were cramped, with low ceilings. The Summanus would find them difficult to navigate.

  So Marcus rammed his shoulder against the cellar door, wrenching it open. It slammed up against the interior wall inside. Marcus rattled down the old wooden steps, making as much noise as he could to draw some of them after him.

  Rick was also clomping up the main staircase, his boots landing heavily. Normally, he was incredibly light and agile on his feet. He was drawing attention to himself, too.

  Marcus slapped the light switch as he hit the last step, then moved onto the old concrete floor. The cement floor, the English called it. The whole cellar structure was another add-on. Ilaria had spent weeks researching the history of the cottage, which was older than Rick’s possession of it. It had originally been an earth-floor building, dating back to nearly the Anglo-Saxon period. Sometime in the past, the original earth floor had been excavated and a cellar built for defense and storage, while the wooden floor had been added over the top of it. The cellar would have been earth-only for a long time. In later years, the concrete would have been poured in deference to modern human living standards.

  Even later still, someone had added a number of interior walls, dividing the cellar up into cramped little rooms, most of them with the studs still showing on one side of the wall.

  Rick had ignored the cellar for decades. Ilaria, though, had been slowly renovating, doing a lot of the work herself at nights, while Marcus slept and Rick studied his thought-walls.

  At the end of the corridor there was a slate-tiled bathroom, with a big, old-fashioned clawfoot bath, decent lighting and a huge walk-in shower. All three of them preferred this bathroom to the miniscule washroom upstairs, with its shower cubicle that could shoot the user out into the middle of the room if they bent over the wrong way and their backside hit the wall.

  Marcus put his back to the bathroom and watched the stairs. He had eight bullets, because he always made sure to put one in the chamber and reload the clip with an eleventh bullet. He had used three already. If he aimed carefully, he could take care of anything that came down the stairs.

  He had left the cellar door swinging open and the Summanus had learned how to operate doors. The first came through at great speed. Marcus was ready for that. He calmly put a bullet into its middle and it tumbled down the rest of the stairs, stopping at the bottom in a tangle of wrongly bent limbs, writhing and screaming.

  The second slipped through the doorway right behind the first. Marcus plugged it, making it lurch forward and fall, to land on top of the first.

  There was a pause.

  That was when Marcus realized Rick had anticipated even this aspect of splitting up, in the short less-than-second he had considered it. The stairs were so narrow only one Summani at a time could traverse them.

  Those chasing Rick upstairs would have the same problem. The main stairs were not much wider than these and they had a sharp turn in the middle, too. Rick could sit at the top of the stairs and pop them off like ducks in a shooting gallery, for as long as his ammunition lasted. As Rick kept a Glock in his jacket beside the knife and a spare clip besides, he could sit there quite a while. Long enough to make the Summanus pause and reconsider.

  Marcus grinned, as the third Summani appeared at the top of the stairs. He waited until it had committed itself and went for the same easy chest shot and watched it cascade down the stairs with satisfaction.

  The only deciding factor here was how many Summanus were in the house. They had learned in the last year that the Summanus preferred to hunt alone. They only cooperated with each other during full-scale battle conditions, when thousands of them would gather together.

  Working in small guerilla units had not seemed to occur to them. However, they were scary fast learners and might have picked up the idea from the hunter units that spent every night tracking them down and routing them from human cities and other population centers.

  There was certainly more than one inside Rick’s cottage right now. How many of them, though?

  Marcus didn’t let himself grow complacent. Rick had maneuvered them both into perfect positions of strength but a mistake could easily change that. He stayed alert and took them one by one.

  He had four bullets left and the pile of Summanus bodies on the stairs had obscured nearly every step, when he heard Rick on the main stairs. He was moving down them.

  Marcus shook his head. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, addressing the air. Rick wouldn’t hear him with all the Summanus screeching going on.

  Then Rick’s heavy caliber gun fired and it sound loud even down here.

  There was scrabbling outside the cellar door at the head of the stairs. More screeching. The clip of Summanus toes on the old wooden floor. They were moving quickly.

  Rick’s gun fired again and Marcus saw one of them stagger backward, arms flailing. The elbow spike slammed into the doorframe, digging out a narrow trench in the wood.

  Then it was gone. There were more of them up there, though. The hallway was dark with their bodies, cutting off the little overhead light.

  Marcus wondered how many of them were in the house. Were they pouring in through the windows like a river?

  What did they want?

  Rick’s gun bellowed three more times, the shots close together. The Summanus Marcus could see through the doorway were swarming, circling in a manner that made him think they had been surprised and were trying to regroup.

  The gun fired twice more, herding them back toward the living room.

  Then Rick dived through the door and nearly overbalanced when his foot struck the first Summani body at the top of the stairs. He flailed, then his hand slapped on the worn balustrade. He leapt over the beam like a high jumper and dropped to the concrete not far away from Marcus and straightened up.

  “What are you doing?” Marcus demanded, lowering his own gun.

  Rick turned and opened the door nearest him. It was Marcus’ lab. “None of them came after me. None at all,” he said over his shoulder. “Watch the stairs!” he added from inside the room.

  Marcus moved up level with the open door, his gun trained on the stairs. “What do you mean, none of them?”

  Rick stepped out of the room. In his arm he had two of the Molotov cocktails that Marcus had made out of milk bottles. The pale reddish liquid inside them, sloshing around beneath the rag stoppers, was Pyrrhus.

  “Rick?” Marcus had to lift his voice above the noise the Summanus were making. Then he shot the next Summani to try the door. Their attempts were slowing down. They were thinking it through.

  Rick put the bottles on the floor next to the open door and grabbed Marcus’ arm. “Come with me.” He pulled, nearly wrenching Marcus off his feet, back down the passage, away from the stairs.

  “What the fuck, Rick?” Marcus said. He fired at the Summani that appeared at the top of the stairs and missed, because of Rick’s yanking on his arm. He pulled his arm out of Rick’s grip, which required all his strength and almost dislocated his shoulder in the process. He stopped and took better aim and dropped the Summani this time.

  Rick hauled him backward again, through the ba
throom door. Their feet crunched on the slate. “Watch the door!” Rick demanded, letting go of his arm. He went over to the claw-foot bath and bent over it, gripped both sides and heaved.

  “What the hell?” Marcus spared a glance down the passage. It was clear, but it wouldn’t be for long, as he couldn’t see the top of the stairs from here. The Summanus would be able to descend without resistance. “What are you doing?”

  “The Summanus didn’t follow me up the stairs. None of them. They want you, Marcus.”

  “Me?” Marcus frowned. “The Summanus don’t take prisoners. They don’t kill strategically. They feed and they destroy the enemy. Why would they want me?”

  “I don’t know,” Rick said, sounding breathless. He was hauling at the sides of the tub, his fingers white on the edges. “They left Ilaria alone—I saw her heading into the village from the window on the top landing. They didn’t come after me. Yet there are dozens of them trying to figure out how to get down here and reach you.” He clamped his jaw, making the muscle in the corner of it flex.

  The tub gave a long, low groan, then came up from the floor. There was a tearing sound and a grinding of metal. The drain was being ripped from the bottom of it.

  Marcus glanced along the passage. Nothing yet.

  Then he looked back over his shoulder, fascinated at the display of Rick’s overwhelming strength. He still had no idea what Rick was doing.

  When Rick turned the heavy, cast-iron tub over and dropped it onto the floor with a crash, Marcus understood. He shook his head.

  Rick lifted the edge of the tub up by two feet. “Get in,” he said shortly.

  “And leave you to face them alone? Not happening.”

  “They don’t want me,” Rick said patiently and quickly. “We’re both about to run out of bullets. Fire is the only thing that will stop them now. They’re in the house and contained. This old place will go up like a bonfire. The tub is fireproof. So is the floor. Get in Marcus. We don’t have time to argue.”

  Marcus shook his head. He couldn’t think of a single logical reason why he should stay right where he was. He just knew he wasn’t going to hide and leave this all on Rick’s shoulders. No way.