Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

“Sir Guy was a trusting fool, too,” said Nicodemus. “That’s why I loved him. You, however, are a disappointment even as a pawn. I’ll have to find some new toys.”

LaRoque heard the words, but he could not tear himself away from the image. As he watched the trickster opened his mouth and blew out his cheeks in a huge exhalation. But it was not air that he exhaled; instead a burst of living fire erupted from between the lips of the face of the demon in the mirror.

Sixty yards above the limousine the Nightbird 319 stealth helicopter hovered without lights in the endless predawn darkness.

“Target acquired.”

A voice on the radio headset said, “You are cleared to fire.”

The pilot squeezed the button and launched a Hellfire missile. It struck the car in less than one second and a massive fireball blasted upward from the hard-packed sand of the Iranian desert.

“Target destroyed,” reported the pilot, his voice bland, detached.

“Return to base,” said Mr. Church.

The helo banked left and flew toward the Kuwaiti border. The ground-based radar looked right through it as it vanished.

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:33 a.m.

I struggled to get to my feet.

A minute ago I had thought that the whole world was sliding into the mouth of hell, but now a different kind of hell had come to this place of shadows. There were screams and Upierczi running everywhere. Flares popped in the air, painting everything in bright white light.

I took a step toward Grigor and my foot kicked something. I looked down and saw the code scrambler.

I bent and picked it up.

“Cowboy-on your six!”

It was Khalid’s voice, and I turned to see one of the vampires four feet away. I had no time to run. I didn’t want to run. As he slammed into me I buried the pistol under his chin and blew off the top of his head. We hit the ground and I lay there, Upier blood all over me. In my face, my eyes, my mouth.

I rolled over and threw up.

Grigor was still screaming. Then I heard a sharp yelp of pain and looked up to see the Upier fling Ghost aside. Ghost hit the side of a packing crate and collapsed, spitting blood onto the floor. I saw a couple of teeth, too.

That made me mad. Maybe I needed that to shake off the damage and the pain. I came out of my daze and finally the situation gelled in my mind. The Upierczi were rushing outward from me, some were seeking cover, most were rushing at Echo Team. Bunny and Top were at the foot of the metal stairs. Bunny had a combat shotgun with a drum magazine and he was firing, firing, firing. Everything that came at him died. The heavy buckshot soaked with garlic oil poisoned every Upier that wasn’t instantly killed by his blasts. The ones who took a few pellets staggered away, gagging and twitching with the onset of allergic shock.

Top was watching his back, firing a big Navy Colt automatic, the hollow points doing terrible work in the tightly packed crowd.

On the other side of the chamber, Khalid and Lydia were behind a packing crate, using it as a shooting blind to create a cross fire.

“Frag out!” Lydia yelled and lobbed grenades into the heart of the vampires.

The fragmentation grenades weren’t filled with garlic, but the blasts tore the monsters to pieces.

I saw three Upierczi running along the wall toward them, well out of Lydia’s line of sight. I raised my pistol but before I could fire the monsters went down, one, two, three, their heads burst apart by sniper rounds. John Smith, firing from somewhere I couldn’t see.

My knife was on the floor too, and I grabbed it as well. I shoved knife and scrambler into my pocket and tapped my earbud. “Echo, Echo, this is Cowboy. I have the football and I need a doorway out of here.”

“I have your back,” came the reply, but it wasn’t in my earbud. I whirled, and there she was.

Dressed all in black, splashed with blood, a wickedly curved blade in each hand.

“Violin,” I began, but she shook her head.

“No time.”

She lunged past me as several Upierczi rushed my blind side. Until that moment I didn’t understand what “gifts” the dhampyri had gotten from the cauldron of their birth. Violin was not as physically powerful, but my God, she was fast.

She met the rushing vampires, and even though I am trained to observe and understand combat at any level, I could not follow what happened. Her arms moved so fast, her body spun and danced as she threaded her way through the pack, the silver blades whipped with such frenzy that the monsters seemed to disintegrate around her. It was so fast that their blood hung in the air like mist. It was hypnotic and beautiful in the most awful way that perfect violence can be beautiful; and it was horrible because there was nothing natural about what I was seeing.

Violin was a thing born from rape, torn from a tortured mother by a monster of a father, raised in a culture of rage and humiliation. If it was possible for the concept of vengeance to be embodied in one form, then that’s what I was seeing.

The Upierczi did not understand the nature of their death. I could see that on their faces. They saw a woman-something that to them represented a thing to be taken and used and discarded-and they attacked her with the arrogance of habitual users. They expected her to fall. They expected her to be weak.

Then she spoke to them, a snarled challenge filled with hate. I don’t know what she said, or what language it was, but I caught three words. Grigor. Lilith. And Dhampyr.

The Upierczi recoiled in terror, and then she was among them, and strong as they were they fell before the precise and unstoppable fury of this daughter of Lilith.

She killed and killed and killed.

And yet, with all of that, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. There were at least a hundred of the Upierczi in the chamber. More of them were seeded through the staff of the refinery. There were a handful of us.

We were going to lose this fight.

In my earbud I heard John Smith say, “Mother of God.”

And then I heard him scream.

I raised my gun, searching the catwalks for Smith. I saw him.

I saw what was left of him fall.

Grigor, bloody, torn, perhaps dying, stood on the catwalk fifty yards away. His mouth was bright with fresh blood.

John Smith struck the hard stone floor in a broken sprawl. His throat was completely torn away.

“ No! ”

I heard that scream of denial fill the air. From Bunny’s throat, from Lydia’s and Khalid’s. From my own.

Before I knew what I was doing I was running with my gun held in both hands, firing, firing. Bullets pinged and whanged off the steel pipes of the catwalk, but Grigor ducked away and fled out through an open doorway.

I raced toward the stairway, but Khalid was closer and he bolted up the metal steps in hot pursuit. Seven Upierczi saw what was happening and they leapt like apes onto the pipes and climbed upward. I emptied my magazine at them. One fell away. By the time I reached the foot of the stairs I had the magazines swapped out and I ran upward. I was still hurt, still bleeding. Maybe inside, too. My chest was a furnace and it felt like it was consuming me, but I didn’t care.

As I reached the top deck, the last of the Upierczi turned and blocked my way.

I put three rounds through his face and kicked his body out of my way.

Behind me there was another massive explosion, and I lingered at the doorway, knowing that the blast signature didn’t match our fragmentation grenades. I was right.

Smoke and fire billowed out of one of the tunnels and Upierczi bodies were flung backward. Then a wave of new figures flooded in. Thirty of them. Women.