The Children of the Sun (59 page)

The Emperor tried to sidestep, and with his speed he nearly managed it, but Two had anticipated this and shifted her direction at the last moment. The sword didn’t pierce his abdomen as she’d hoped, but its entire length ran along his side, cutting through his robes and slicing him open. Blood poured forth and the Emperor screamed, dropping Thomas, who landed on top of Two and drove her to the floor.

The Emperor lifted up his leg and stomped down, breaking Thomas’s sword. He made this same motion again, and Two heard a noise that seemed to her ears like a gunshot as one of Thomas’s legs broke under the blow. Thomas screamed in agony and Two, trapped underneath him, could only cry to Theroen and Tori for help.

They didn’t disappoint her, swarming over the Emperor and hacking away with their blades. For a moment it seemed that they might at last overwhelm him. Tori landed a blow to the space between the Emperor’s neck and shoulder, and Theroen scored a hit on the upper thigh.

Then the Emperor brought his claws around, raking them through the air, and caught Tori in the abdomen, tearing through the leather and Kevlar of her vest and shredding the skin beneath. She screamed and fell to the ground, and when Theroen glanced in her direction, the Emperor reached out with both hands, grabbed the blade of his weapon, and tore it from his grasp. Theroen leapt backward, out of reach of the sword, but the Emperor never swung it. Instead, he twisted his massive hands and broke the blade in two separate places, letting the pieces fall to the floor.

“Now I will end this,” the Emperor growled, and leaving Two and Thomas behind he stalked toward Theroen, who continued to back away. Two could see Tori struggling back to her feet, blood pouring from her midsection, her face a mask of grim hate.

That was when the woman that Theroen had earlier bashed face-first into the mahogany wall outside stepped out of the shadows, her eyes puffed and bruised, and said, “Need a hand, Captain?”

The Emperor stopped and turned toward her, eyes going wide in surprise, and from somewhere in the darkness behind the woman’s left shoulder there was another popping noise like the one Two had heard earlier. The rifle round caught the Emperor in the chest and did not fail to penetrate, driving deep inside of him and throwing him off balance. He tripped and crashed to the ground, struggled once to get to his feet, fell back, and was still.

“Nice shot, Carrie,” Vanessa said as a woman who Two did not know, her face deeply scarred, came into view holding the rifle. She stood next to Vanessa, looking at the rest of the group with extreme distaste.

“You have really excellent timing, Vanessa,” Tori said, staggering forward. “Hurry, he’s not dead.”

“I know,” Vanessa said. “Carrie, get ready to burn that motherfucker up. Captain, we’ve got about four min—”

The Emperor’s body surged up, in one motion going from lying on his back to lunging forward on his knees, scrabbling toward the group like a gigantic, homicidal crab. His lips were pulled back in an obscene grimace, revealing his terrible, pointed teeth, and his claws clicked and screeched on the stone as he pulled himself toward them with astonishing speed.

The woman Vanessa had called Carrie shouted something, raised her rifle, and fired again, but the shot was wild, bouncing off the floor two feet from the Emperor’s rapidly advancing form. As the monstrous creature drew closer to them, he began to make an inhuman noise of rage that seemed to come from all around and within them. The sound was so loud that it seemed to Two her ears would burst under the onslaught.

“Shit!” Vanessa shrieked, and she began to backpedal, but her feet tangled on one another and she pitched backward, landing on her rear end with a thud. Before she could regain her feet the Emperor had clambered over her, and his mouth opened wider than it ever had previously.

Christ, he’s going to bite her fucking head right off
, Two thought, still lying on the floor, entranced by the sight before her and unable to will her muscles to free her from underneath the semiconscious Thomas. She could see Theroen and Tori standing wide eyed and paralyzed, watching what was happening but seeming unable to will themselves into motion.

“Ness, no!” Carrie screamed, and she launched herself forward, shoulder first, hitting the Emperor with all of the force she could muster. She might as well have been running into stone; the Emperor barely moved. He did, however, bite down on Carrie’s shoulder instead of tearing off Vanessa’s face. Carrie screamed, and when the Emperor rose to his feet he took her with him, jaws still clamped into her flesh. Vanessa scrabbled backward on all fours.

“Shoot him!” she shouted. “For God’s sake, someone shoot him!”

Theroen had neither a gun nor a sword, but he started forward anyway. Tori grabbed his shoulder and hauled him back, snarling, “Save Two! Get her the fuck out of here!” and starting for the Emperor herself.

Carrie was still howling in pain, and the Emperor grabbed her midsection with both hands, releasing her shoulder from his mouth. What had once been her right arm was now a gory mass of shredded flesh, a bright nub of bone sticking out from it. Blood was spraying in jets from some major vein or artery, and the woman had already gone pale with the loss.

“Be honored, soldier,” the Emperor croaked. “I shall take your soul into me, and your life will fuel my victory.”

He opened his mouth again, this time to clamp on to her neck, and at that moment Tori drove both blades deep into his chest, one on each side of where Carrie was hanging. They pierced the Emperor’s breastplate and traveled through his body, the tips punching out through his back. As the Emperor threw back his head and roared in agony, Two saw Carrie yank a small metal cylinder from her belt with her left hand.

“I always wanted to kill one of the big ones,” Carrie Brennan told the Emperor of the Sun, and she rammed her fist as far into his mouth and down his throat as she could. The Emperor’s eyes went wide and he clamped his jaw down in surprise, biting Carrie’s arm off completely. He dropped her body and began to struggle with the limb that was now stuck in his massive gullet.

Tori, seeing what Carrie had done, turned to run, but the Emperor reached out and grabbed her by the neck with one taloned hand, even as the other still struggled to remove Carrie’s arm from his throat. In a moment more, he pulled the arm out and threw it away, but Two saw that the metal cylinder had not come with it. The Emperor was either unaware or too busy dealing with Tori’s struggles to realize what this meant.

“You belong to me!” he roared as Tori beat against his chest, and even as he did so, Two saw orange light flare inside the Emperor’s mouth, and then the man’s midsection burst forth in a great glut of blood and flame. Both he and Tori were enveloped in fire. The heat of it set off the other two grenades on Carrie’s belt, and all three were quickly wrapped in an enormous blaze.

Two was screaming, thrashing, now hauling herself out from underneath the man lying on top of her. Theroen was racing toward her, and she wanted to tell him to turn back, to go help Tori, but she couldn’t seem to find the words. All she could give voice to were raw screams of agony and denial.

“We have to go!” Vanessa shouted, running along beside him, and Theroen made a noise of agreement. Two could hear an alarm sounding now, a final warning that the impending explosions were moments away. Theroen reached her and, moving with surprising calm, he untangled Thomas’s limbs from her own and helped her to her feet.

“Is he still alive?” Vanessa cried as she reached him.

“His leg is broken, but I think he will live,” Theroen said.

“All right,” Vanessa said. “Can you help me?”

The two of them lifted Thomas up – he cried out as they did so and then lapsed back into unconsciousness – and began to make their way toward the far end of the Emperor’s chambers.

“Theroen, we can’t!” Two cried, tugging at him, trying to pull him toward the blaze. “We can’t just leave her.”

Theroen stopped moving for a moment, and he turned to Two with a sad, sympathetic look. “She has gone beyond anything we can do for her. My love, we must leave or die. Tori told me to save you. She would want you to let her go.”

He was right – but that didn’t make it any easier, and for a moment more Two resisted, staring into the flames, hoping beyond hope that her friend would come staggering out of them.

But she didn’t, and at last Two turned, and following Theroen and Vanessa she began to limp in the direction of the exit. Behind her, she heard the first of the explosions starting from somewhere deep within the bowels of the base.

Chapter 29
After the Blaze

Half a mile in front of them, what remained of the building was on fire.

Two and Theroen sat on the cool, damp sand, the great expanse of Lake Michigan at their backs, watching as the central base from which the Children of the Sun had operated first caved in upon itself and then burned. Beside them, Thomas was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. He had come awake halfway through their journey topside, asked his sister what was happening, and accepted her snarling response to shut up without argument.

Vanessa Harper was standing a few feet in front of them and watching as the building that had been her home for the past thirteen years burned. After a time she turned, making her way back to Thomas and the vampires. She, too, sat down in the sand.

“How you doing, little brother?” Vanessa asked, and Thomas grimaced.

“I’m starving,” he said. “I could murder a cheeseburger. Oh, and also I am beat to shit and the motherfucking giant, crazy vampire we spent our whole lives working for stomped the hell outta my leg.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling a little. “I’m going to set that in a minute.”

“That sounds excruciating.”

“Probably will be.”

There was silence between them for a time and then Thomas spoke up again. “We’re both traitors now, Ness.”

“You think?” she asked, her voice laced with sarcasm.

“Why’d you do it?”

“I realized that I couldn’t live with myself anymore if I kept serving him,” Vanessa said. “But I wasn’t ready to die, either. Why didn’t you pull the trigger on that bat, back in New York? Uh … sorry, that vampire.”

Thomas was quiet for a time and then said, “Because when I thought about what the world would be like without her, it wasn’t a place I wanted to live in.”

“Wow. I guess she means a whole lot to you.”

“Guess she does.”

“She’s pretty, too.”

Thomas coughed out a few wheezing laughs. “Girl, you ain’t even seen her when she’s looking good.”

There was another period of silence and then Two asked, “So … what now?”

“I have no clue,” Vanessa said. “To be honest, I’m kind of waiting for you guys to try and finish the job.”

“Is that what you expect of us?” Theroen asked, raising his eyebrows, and Vanessa shrugged.

“I don’t know what to expect. Everything I thought I knew about you guys was nothing but lies, and you already left me alive once. I know what I did, though. I know who I killed. If you have to get some revenge, I’m in no shape to stop you.”

Two sighed. “I can’t speak for Theroen, I guess, but I am done killing people. I don’t ever want to do it again.”

“Revenge will not bring our people back,” Theroen said. “You saved our lives, Vanessa, and your soldier sacrificed herself in order to ensure the Emperor’s destruction. It would be too easy and too glib to simply say ‘we are even’ … but at the very least, I think if we can come to an agreement about the future safety of our people, then Two and I can let you go in peace.”

“Tori would have wanted that,” Two said, and she closed her eyes against the sudden tears that threatened to overwhelm her.

“A lot of Children troops escaped, and I’m not making any claims about them, but I’m done,” Vanessa said. “My job as a soldier for the Children ended sometime around the point I instructed Carrie to shoot the Emperor in the chest. I don’t know what I’m going to do from here, but hunting vampires isn’t it.”

“I’d think about going far away,” Two said. “There’s a Russian chick I know, and if she made it out alive and finds out that you did, too, she probably won’t stop hunting you until you’re dead.”

“I think I know what you mean, and I don’t blame her,” Vanessa said.

“You from around here? Chicago?”

“No, Thomas and I grew up in Cincinnati.”

“You think you’ll go back?”

Vanessa shook her head. “Nah. I fuckin’ hate Cincinnati. I’ve always wanted to see San Diego. Hang out on the beach, eat some tacos, drink margaritas … I’ve got an inheritance that I never did anything with. Should be enough to start over with.”

Two nodded. “That sounds nice.”

Vanessa glanced over at the burning building and then up at the moon. “I wish Carrie was coming with me.”

“I wish Tori was coming with Theroen and me,” Two said.

Thomas spoke, his voice wistful. “I wish I was at a hospital getting filled up on painkillers.”

Vanessa nodded. “We have to set that leg. It’s … seriously, Tommy, it’s gonna hurt. I’m sorry.”

“Tommy?” Two asked, and Thomas glanced over at her.

“Don’t even think about it …”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Two replied, smiling a little. “Here, hold my hand.”