Enduring Service (17 page)

Pain. Searing pain. Dixon knew the wetness he felt through his clothes was his own blood, and a lot of it. He tried to open his eyes, but discovered only one worked. He blinked several times and saw a shiny object laying nearby. Sulie’s locket reflected the light from the window and he reached his broken hand to it and palmed it.

If he could get in a deep breath, perhaps he could get his second wind. Of course, it hurt like hell to breathe and he fought for any air he could get. His hand tightened its grip around the locket and he held on to it for strength.

Deep down, he knew he was still in danger. Worse, he knew Sulie was as well. His ears were ringing, but he could make out one thing distinctly — Sulie was screaming.

Discovering he could not turn his head, he lay looking straight up at the ceiling. He blinked several times and shadows became visible. He couldn’t make out any details, but he knew he lay on the floor — a very hard floor. He could hear Sulie and knew Briggs remained nearby.

Every bone felt broken and yet he managed to move his hand to the bars of the cage and drag himself closer to the door. The door! It was opened. He couldn’t remember Briggs’ opening it, so Dixon figured he must have passed out. But for how long?

Dixon pulled himself up to his knees, and more blood poured from his neck. He took several deep breaths to not pass out. Dixon looked into the cell towards the bed. Briggs appeared as just the white blur from his hospital smock. No details, no specifics. Briggs was a big vampire and the white blob Dixon now fixed his eyes on had to be him. God. That was one big, fucking vampire.

Dixon caught a glimpse of a smaller blue image hidden by the big white blob. He knew the blueness had to be Sulie. Her blue silk blouse and jeans. Dixon focused on the blueness. The madman was attacking her and Dixon was her only hope.

He had to get up and in more than a four–on–the–floor sort of way.

Consciousness was hard to keep. Dixon knew he was bleeding out and death now came to claim him. Nothing could stop that now. But Sulie was immortal. She was meant to live forever. He would do everything in his power to see that she did.

His body slumped, and he mentally watched as he stood and walked across the room with the dagger in his hand aimed at Charles’ heart. His broken leg performed perfectly under his weight and he was there to save Sulie. Dixon watched himself as he effortlessly stabbed the vampire. He watched him disappear into dust. Dixon then glanced down to Sulie, who was no longer in chains. She was alive and well…

Sulie’s scream woke Dixon and stirred him back to consciousness.

Damn. He still lay there on the ground. He had not moved an inch.

He forced his one eye open and the white and blue masses still lay on the bed. He strained his neck and looked around the room.

He crawled across the floor to the threshold of the door. That’s where he found his dagger. Dixon picked up the weapon, his hand shaking. He wasn’t afraid of death. To his mind, his death was a done deal. He just needed a few minutes of strength to save Sulie.

Dixon molded his fingers around the hilt of the dagger. The pain he felt told him this was reality and not a dream. At least he hoped as much.

Now the challenge was to move.

He knew his breathing sounded raspy, so he did his best to hold his breath. He hoped Charles would be too occupied to even notice his approach.

Lifting his head was the hardest task he ever had to do. Blood oozed out and pooled on the floor. Dixon’s head swooned and he felt dizzy, but he forced himself to focus. Fortunately, the entire room smelled like blood, otherwise Briggs probably would have noticed him.

Crawling to the bed, his foot accidentally tapped the cell door and it gently closed, locking him in the cell with his deadly opponent. It was a match to the death. He held onto the dagger. Sweat and blood streamed down his face, but he dismissed it. His hands trembled, but he steeled himself and gathered strength for his mission.

On the bed, he saw the white mass and identified his target. He only had one chance to hit his mark. Dixon squinted his eye as he tried to steady his vision.

Holding the dagger as high as he could, he used the weight of his body to plunge the dagger into Briggs’ back.

Blood sprayed from the wound, splattering all over Dixon. Briggs let out a loud growl and rose from the bed, which allowed Dixon to twist the dagger and enlarge the wound.

Dixon knew he posed no match for an angered vampire, but everything moved in slow motion as Briggs turned to face him. Dixon pushed Briggs back down on Sulie with the weight of his own body against the blade. He stabbed again and another gaping wound, with more blood, formed on Briggs. Dixon’s vision began fading to black and his body began convulsing in pain. He pulled the dagger from Briggs’ body and plunged the weapon down a third time, causing him to vanish from atop of Sulie in a pile of dust.

Brigg’s remains covered Sulie while the blade continued its journey downward. It stabbed Sulie in her shoulder. She screamed out in pain as Dixon fell on top of her dead. In their private tomb, the two lay together, with Sulie’s bleeding shoulder dragging her to death’s door.

Raymond helped Ben off the ground and the two turned in unison as they heard two cell phones chirping. They walked back to the bar area. Raymond leaned under the wooden frame on one of the cots and rescued one phone from its hiding place as Ben fetched the second phone from within the tossed duffle bag. Voice mails and text messages from Charles filled the phones, all demanding to know where everyone was.

“Charles suspects something may be wrong and may already know we’re here,” Raymond said.

Ben searched the duffle bag. Other than the cell phone, there were food staples in the bag — bread, bottled water and peanut butter. “Provisions for the humans they’re keeping.”

“Humans?” Raymond led Ben farther into the dining hall where the strong stench of dried blood and human waste filled the air, causing Raymond to gasp.

“Yep,” Ben said. “I saw them as I fought, but they sat motionless the entire time.” No lights were on in the restaurant and the shutters had been closed shut. With their keen sense of sight, the two saw a dozen humans, a few dead by the smell of decomposition in the air. Because of the lack of noise, Raymond suspected the humans barely hanging onto life had been compelled to sit still, even with freedom only a few feet away.

“I don’t see Dixon,” Ben said as he searched the room.

“We come back for the humans and the computer after we rescue Sulie and Dixon — and kill Trudy,” Raymond ordered. He gazed down to read the last text message displayed on one of the phones. Wherever Charles was, he was pissed.

*******

Raymond led Ben to the basement level where he hoped to find Sulie and Dixon. They walked down the narrow and dark stairwell and the scent of fresh blood filled the air. At the bottom of the stairwell, a corridor led to a broken gate.

He studied the broken keypad and stripped wires off the lock. The captors would have access to this level, so he wondered who broke through. Noticing the bars of the gate, Raymond assumed they were silver. He pushed the door open with his foot, and it creaked to his bidding. He listened carefully to whatever might be lying in wait. But all was silent. Not even a human heart beat was detectable.

“Do you sense that?” he asked Ben.

“Which? The vampire or all the blood?”

Raymond nodded, as he stepped over the threshold of the door and watched for any signs of attack. Finding none, they continued and found a pool of blood on the floor. Its trail traveled up the hallway and to the left. Raymond grimaced and noticed an expression of dread from Ben as well. The blood on the floor was the same blood type as Dixon’s.

Raymond found it impossible to tell if the vampire he sensed was Sulie or not. He felt the shivers run up his spine as he took in a deep breath. His sister normally smelled of lavender, but after being imprisoned for days without her soaps and shampoos, she would not smell the same. He had to assume an enemy lie in wait for them or possibly another imprisoned vampire. But why would Charles and his group lock up another vampire? Was Sulie just one of many?

Raymond held tightly onto his SBL with its second bolt in the weapon’s chamber. Slowly, he peeked his head around the second gated door and spied into the tiny cell. In the room, he found his beloved sister and best friend lying quietly together in the bed in the corner of the cell.

Sulie was alive! A heavy weight lifted from Raymond’s heart as he saw his sister. He bit his lip and felt a tear streak down his cheek. He had found her in time.

But, no human heartbeat sounded in the room. No heartbeat at all — and he knew it was his best friend Dixon who lay on the bed with Sulie. A feeling of loss tugged at Raymond as his hand touched the cell door and was burned by the silver bar.

He pulled his hand away and realized the door was locked. Raymond studied the metal frame. The hinges appeared solid, and the lock remained functional. He scanned the room for traps, but didn’t sense anyone else around — only a damned locked cell door that had a bio reader with a lit LED for a lock. He handed his weapon to Ben and then pulled the panel off, which revealed a mess of wires beneath the entry pad. He let out a sign of frustration as he glanced over to Ben, who shrugged his shoulders. Just as he thought he could rip the door open with his bare hands, he heard his wife through his ear bud.

“
We shut down the generator. No trouble at this end
,” she said.

“Understood.” Raymond noticed the lock’s LED light was no longer lit, so he easily kicked the cell door opened with his foot.

He ran into the room and up to the bed faster than he normally could have thanks to the cord blood in his body. Now near the two of them, he confirmed there was no human heart beat. He gently rolled the lifeless form of his best friend off his sister, which caused Dixon’s body to spill to the floor. Lying on his back, Dixon’s dead eyes stared up towards the ceiling and Raymond knew there was no hope in saving him.

Raymond concentrated on his weakened sister, focusing first on the dagger sticking out of her shoulder. Darkened purple blood, nearly black in color, slowly oozed from the wound, but at least she was not dust. She lay on the bed lifeless, looking so old and frail compared with her normal vibrant self.

He pulled out the dagger and leaned over to lick her wound. His saliva sealed the cut and stopped the blood loss.

In her current state, Sulie was unable to drink the vial of cord blood he had for her, so Raymond pulled five syringes of blood from his pocket. They were the travel syringes the team used when out in the field. They had a button to warm the blood to human body temperature, but he didn’t wait for the blood to warm up. He injected the first two cold into her veins before he noticed a trickle of red blood streaming down her forehead and onto her face. He traced the path of the blood up past her hairline to examine the wound. A small cut, pierced by a piece of glass, had lodged into her scalp, keeping the wound open and bleeding. He sealed that wound as well, cursing to himself at the loss of the first two syringes. He then administered his remaining syringes while Ben took a now empty syringe and filled it with the cord blood they had brought and injected that one as well.

With new blood in her body, Sulie’s body repaired itself. Raymond and Ben watched as the wrinkles on her face ironed themselves out, her skin gained back its youthful elasticity, and her white hair changed back to being salt–and–pepper. Within a few minutes, her body regained the youth of a woman in her sixties.

But she remained unconscious.

Raymond shook his sister and noticed the pile of vampire dust on her clothes. Dixon was the only other person in the room. Had he subdued a vampire and somehow managed to kill him? Raymond thought it unlikely, but it seemed the only explanation. The evidence pointed to Dixon being the hero and quite likely the one who broke the outer locked gate. Raymond glanced down at his dead friend — the most honorable human he had ever known. He silently nodded to Ben and whispered for him to take Dixon to the hallway. Once alone with his sister, he talked to her and begged her to open her eyes.

*******

Ben gently picked up Dixon’s lifeless body. The limp form sagged in his arms as he removed Dixon from the cell and lay him on the cold floor of the hallway out of eyesight. Ben then sat down next to his former Director and friend. With a heavy heart, he gave a report to Sterling and the others over the com unit that they had found Sulie and she needed more blood. He didn’t mention Dixon lay dead. That was something he didn’t want to admit, but the reality of Dixon’s cloudy eyes stared blankly at him. His body already felt cold. Ben could do nothing for his human friend, other than to close the man’s eyes.

Humans, as well as vampires, died. It was a fact of life. It was when the death seemed pointless and unnecessary that bothered Ben the most about dying. A possibility always existed that a member of the Colony could be lost during any one of their missions. Being human always put Dixon at a disadvantage. He was a good man and, overall, dying while trying to save another individual was not a bad way to go.

A shiny silver object lay pressed into Dixon’s hand, so Ben bent down to examine it. It looked silver, so Ben tried his best not to touch it. Dixon’s fingers had pressed the object into his palm, leaving its design within the folds of his bloody skin. At first, Ben thought the object might have belonged to the vampire who had taken Dixon’s life, but then he read the initials on the locket and knew it belonged to Sulie.

He pried the jewelry from Dixon’s hand, knowing it couldn’t be silver. He placed the locket in his pocket and promised his friend that he would return it to Sulie. A tear threatened to escape, but Ben forced his emotions back. Dixon was a hero. He died a hero. It wasn’t a bad ending to a life well lived.

*******

Fluttering her eyes and taking a deep breath, Sulie slowly regained consciousness. Immediately, she struggled and fought against the chains. How long had she been out? My God, what had Charles done while she lay unconscious? She cried out in protest, “Get off me, Charles! Get off me!”

“Sulie, it’s me. Raymond,” he said quickly. “The team is here to rescue you. You’re safe.” He fought with her to bring her back to the present.

She opened her eyes and began crying as she recognized her brother.

“You’re okay. The team is here for you,” he said, trying to calm her. His hand stroked her cheek as he smiled to reassure her. She still lay in chains, so he moved to the foot of the bed and, with his increased strength, pulled apart the metal frame. Her feet were now free, although still in silver chains. Raymond walked to the headboard and did the same to free her hands. He was now able to hold her in his arms. “Shhhh. It’s okay.”

Sulie trembled at first, but then looked wide–eyed around the room. “Where’s Charles?”

Raymond glanced down at the dust, now recognizing whose remains they were. “He’s gone.”

“No. He was here… attacking me.”

“He’s gone now, Sulie. You’re safe.”

Sulie’s head was spinning. Charles was gone?

“We’re going to get you out of here,” he said.

“Dixon!” Sulie scanned frantically around the room. When she didn’t see him, she sprang to her feet. The silver chains tripped her and she became dizzy and tumbled back onto the broken bed.

“Take deep breaths, Sulie. You’re weak.”

“Key!” she yelled as she pointed to the small table.

Raymond barely had time to retrieve the key before she grabbed it from his hands and unlocked her shackles, her fingers brushing up against the silver chains and burning her flesh.

“Sulie, calm down. You’re hurting yourself even more.”

She didn’t listen. She got off the bed and screamed when she saw the blood in the room. She ran to the cell door, but Raymond stopped her.

“It’s too late, Sulie. Dixon’s dead.”