A Cat's Chance in Hell (34 page)

She and Julius were being trailed by three of his personal guards; Nathan, Fergus and Marcello, as they stalked silently through the dark alleyway. From the alley on the far side of their targeted building, Gabi heard a cat hiss and the sound of its claws on rough concrete as it took flight. Those were the only sounds that gave away the location of Kyle and Alexander’s group which was closing in from the other side.

A slight breeze eddied through the narrow street making Gabi wrinkle her nose at the array of malodorous smells it stirred up as it passed. Ugh, her ultra sensitive sense of smell she could almost do without. She moved forward cautiously, trying to resist the urge to check that the Vampires were still behind her, they were so quiet and moved so smoothly that, to her normal senses, she felt utterly alone. Only her supernatural ESP told her they were all less than five metres from her. She held up a hand and brought the group to a halt, while she opened her senses to feel what was waiting for them inside the building. It was a relatively modern warehouse in an industrial area, and there was some kind of Magical protection around it. She still wasn’t getting anything from it, her senses were just picking up the whole building as a solid supernatural being, she couldn’t penetrate the shell to find out what and how many waited inside.

“
This is SO off,” she said low in her throat.

They were all wearing digital comlink devices, state of the art, and only barely available to the military elite. Lord and Lady only knew where Byron had managed to get them. They consisted of a small plastic patch, the size of a plaster, stuck on each of their necks near their voice boxes, as well as a smaller, barely visible patch placed behind each ear. They each also had a titanium encased microprocessor, the size of half a credit card, taped to their bodies somewhere, that was up to personal preference, and Gabi had hers (must to the amusement of the males) taped inside her bra. She knew it would be safe there and had little chance of falling off.

“
Still nothing?” Kyle’s quiet voice came through so clearly it felt like he was speaking directly into her skull.

“
Nothing but a really bad feeling,” she murmured back.

“
So, are we agreed then?” Julius chimed in, “We wait for your Magus?”

Gabi sighed. “Yes, we wait for Athena,” she agreed irritably. “She’d better hurry up.”

Gabi was officially ‘top dog’ on this mission, something that the Vampires had agreed to surprisingly easily, apparently Demons made Vampires as nervous as anyone else. But she was treating it more as a collaborative effort, it seemed pointless to her to ignore the input of men who had been in more conflict than she would ever see in her lifetime. She tried not to have an ego when it came to that sort of thing, ego could get you killed quicker than anything else in this game.

Gabi’s group moved back down the alley to where a large dumpster offered protection from the weak moonlight filtering through the clouds and hunkered down to wait. The Vampires were eerily still, Gabi had to restrain herself from fidgeting; staying still with the adrenalin pumping was not usually an option for her. Her restless energy needed an outlet.

“
Kyle,” she said softly, “you’d better go and meet Athena and bring her in. Don’t forget she doesn’t know much about being quiet so you’ll have to give her some pointers. Get her to try it from a distance first; the closer she gets the higher the chance they’ll hear her.”

“
Gotcha,” Kyle’s voice came back, “on my way.”

“
Do you think we need to check the rear section?” she asked no one in particular but Julius replied.

“
It was reported as having no exit points, but it can’t hurt to be sure,” he murmured softly into her mind.

She suppressed a small, delicious shiver.

“
Marcello,” he said, the order clear.

The slightly built Vampire gave a quick flash of teeth and was gone.

Gabi chewed on her lower lip and ran her fingernails up and down the ridged hilt of a dagger strapped to her side, her eyes constantly roving over the darkened windows and doors on their side of the building.

Julius smiled as he watched her; he could see it was taking every ounce of her control to keep from pacing. Being still was not a natural state for her, he’d come to realise. Even when she was sitting or sleeping, she wasn’t still for more than a few seconds at a time. Constantly in motion. He’d spent a long time watching her sleep today. He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t been able to drag himself out of the room; watching her had given him both a strong sense of peace and calm as well as an intense, protective anxiety as he replayed his recent premonition over and over again in his mind, trying to find a way to change it. Eventually the sun had risen well above the horizon and the brightness in the room had become uncomfortable. All the rooms in the house had blackout curtains, but he’d thought she would feel better if she woke to sunlight rather than utter dark, so he’d left hers open and retired to his own room to muse. It had been mid-morning before he fell asleep, and then Alex had roused him an hour before sunset to discuss some business. Most Vampires would have felt sleep deprived with that little sleep, but he’d developed the ability to handle it and could even go the entire day without sleep, something few Vampires ever mastered.

“
Athena’s here,” Kyle reported in a low voice. “She’s starting the counterspell now; she says it will take a few minutes.”

“
Oh. Shit.” Marcello’s accented voice came softly but fervently over the comlink.

“
What?” barked Julius, even as the four shadows crouching near the dumpster reared up and sped towards the rear of the building.

“
There’s an underground opening here,” Marcello said tersely. “It’s been made to look like a manhole cover, but the scents around it indicate recent use by Demons and some other creature I’ve never smelled before.”

“
Fall back, get out of sight,” Gabi hissed. “We don’t want them knowing we’re here.”

“
Too late,” Marcello grunted, and they could all hear the sound of his sword clearing its sheath.

The other four followed suit, drawing their respective weapons, abandoning stealth and running full tilt down the alley.

“
Kyle,” Gabi shouted, “spread out your men and keep the other exits covered, and keep Athena working on the counterspell. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

They leapt an eight foot wire fence at the end of the alley without pausing and rounded the corner into a grimy, unlit parking lot. Marcello was backing towards them, his sword out, swinging menacingly in front of him and a wicked looking dagger in his left hand. Pouring out of the ground came hulking, misshapen human forms, hissing, grunting and snuffling. As the pale moonlight bathed them in an eerie, blue glow, it was clear that there was no consciousness behind their flat, dead eyes, no thought behind their jerky, uncomfortable movements, simply mindless hunger.

“
Ghouls,” Gabi breathed in horror, “dozens of them.”

“
What the fook?” Fergus’ revulsion was clear in his voice as the smell of rotting meat rolled over them like a tangible cloud.

“
They’re Ghouls,” Gabi repeated, “humans who’ve been bitten by Demons, they become mindless, hungry…things. I’ve only come across two before. They’re very hard to kill. They’ll eat anything that comes near their mouths, so keep your body parts away from them. Not very clever but they don’t bleed out and they don’t seem to feel pain.”

“
How do we kill them?” Julius asked tersely, sizing up the horde that was spreading out and lumbering towards them. He’d heard stories of Ghouls but he’d never encountered any, they were enough to make even him shudder.

“
Only one way I know of for sure. Kyle?” she called, “We need Lance here and as many flame throwers as Byron can find. Now!”

She addressed her small group without looking at them, once again the cold, hard Angeli Morte. “We’ll have to fend them off as best as we can until the flame-throwers get here. Chop off limbs and heads, but be aware that chopped off bits keep moving; they can still do damage, especially the mouths.”

Alexander’s voice came over the comlink for the first time. “We’re on our way,” he said, but Kyle’s voice broke in before he could say any more.

“
Athena’s almost done, Byron’s got the message about Lance and the flame-throwers. Lance should make it here in about fifteen minutes; the flame-throwers will be closer to twenty.”

“
Oh,” Gabi gasped and swayed on her feet.

Julius caught her arm and steadied her without taking his eyes off the Ghoul army.

“
The warehouse,” she said shortly by way of explanation. “Lex, stay where you are. The warehouse is full of Demons, I count five, no six, and at least three Vampires. Ahhh,” she shook her head in frustration, “They’re moving too much. They’re heading for the street-side entrance. We’ll hold the Ghouls here, you and Kyle need to stop the Demons inside getting away, keep Athena with you to banish them if you can’t kill them.”

She didn’t hear whether Alexander agreed or not as the first of the Ghouls rushed them and the onslaught began.

The Demon-infected humans might have been ungainly, uncoordinated and lacking in anything except the most basic of intelligence, but they made up for it with speed and strength and a complete lack of reaction to pain. Gabi and the Vampires were faster and stronger but hugely outnumbered. The small group set their backs to the wall of an adjoining building and began chopping limbs, stabbing, spearing, beheading. Their world narrowed down to a blur of hands and mouths and crude metal weapons. The Ghoul army soon began to look like something out of a cheap horror movie, cuts and gashes, missing limbs and gaping wounds as the defenders set about cutting them to pieces.

Gabi found herself sparing regular glances at the rough tarmac looking for groping hands and gnashing mouths. She was intensely glad that Ghoul saliva didn’t affect like Demon saliva did as she already had several sets of tooth marks on her calves, and her ruined boots would have to be binned after the fight. It was all out slaughter of the Ghouls, but for each one they cut down another took its place and the arms and hands of the first began moving towards them or moving towards the bodies they had been severed from. Headless, limbless bodies careened around crazily, bumping into others or rolling around on the ground. Gabi had noticed some of them picking up the severed pieces, and it looked as though the pieces were trying to reattach themselves. They didn’t spout blood when you dissected them but seemed to ooze thick, red gore instead; the ground was getting coated in it and was becoming slick and slippery.

Through the comlink she could hear the occasional sound of grunts and groans as well as Kyle and Alexander shouting orders but pushed it all to the back of her consciousness. She’d hear if something had gone horribly wrong on their side, and she and her band of Vampires were just barely holding their own.

Nathan was the most silent of the Vampires, fighting with a single-minded intensity, always casting glances to see where Julius was, trying to be close enough to defend his sire. Fergus fought like a madman. A controlled madman, she corrected mentally as she ducked to avoid a metal fencing stake being used like a baseball bat. Fergus looked like a man who loved battle, he was grinning from ear to ear and picking up body parts to fling across the parking lot as he bellowed insults and dared the Ghouls to get him. Gabi was relieved that his voice transmitter had been turned off or broken. He appeared to be having the time of his life. Marcello was quick and agile, darting in and cutting a Ghoul down before it even knew he was close enough; he was utterly intent on his objective, but hadn’t seemed to lose the initial horror of what they were fighting. He shuddered every time he got close to one of them and had a permanent, horrified grimace on his handsome face. Julius was poetry in motion; his swordsmanship was consummate, his movements quick, lithe and confident, his expression intense and focused. He spared a quick glance her way, throwing her a ghost of a grin as he effortlessly decapitated another Ghoul and set to chopping its groping arms off.

Gabi and the Vampires were keeping to a tight, defenders formation, leaving each other room to swing but watching each other’s backs and gradually moving around the edge of the parking lot, keeping the solid walls of other buildings to their backs. They needed to keep moving to avoid standing on the bodies, limbs and entrails littering the ground they’d been fighting on. As they went, the small group fell into a routine of fight, dismember, kick and throw body parts as far away as possible, then fight, dismember, kick, fight.

At some point the waxing moon broke through the barrier of cloud and lit up the combat zone, and Gabi found her eyes drawn to the mass of attackers, she tried to count heads, well, attached heads anyway. Dozens of dead eyes glittered at her in the pale light; she gave up counting at twenty as the horror of the number of ‘turned’ humans began to dawn on her. This couldn’t be accidental, Demons weren’t often capable of leaving a human alive once they attacked; this had to be an orchestrated event.

As yet another Ghoul rushed her, she realised that it was not only men who had been infected, she’d seen some women amongst them, only recognisable by longer hair and daintier bodies, but the one rushing her now was barely more than a child. It seemed to have been a young girl. Once. Her ragged denims and dark, grimy T-shirt were sexless, but her features were refined and her hair longer than was fashionable for a boy, her body hadn’t even had time to develop curves. Gabi suppressed a shudder and shoved down her feelings of guilt and horror as the dead eyes fastened on her. The Ghoul child bared its teeth and lunged for her. She dispatched the youth as quickly as possible and kicked the arms and head away to the side of the fracas. She spun away, scanning for her next victim.