Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

The vampires laughed and laughed at Ghost, but they were looking at me. Red eyes and red mouths surrounded me.

I pivoted and shot the Upier who had kicked Ghost. I hit him in the balls because I wanted him to suffer. He screamed and fell, and the bullet punched all the way through him and hit another Upier in the thigh. Two down. Their screams were so high, so shrill that it wiped the leering smiles from every face.

I liked the effect, so I kept shooting.

I wanted Grigor, but two Upierczi threw themselves into the path of the gunfire and died for their king.

I shot the gun dry, and in the confusion I swapped out the magazines.

But I never had a chance to fire the gun. A pale figure moved toward me with such insane speed that I couldn’t bring the barrel to bear. Grigor. He swatted the Beretta out of my hand and it went spinning away.

He grabbed a handful of my shirt and pulled me toward him. I used the impetus to hook a palm-heel shot across his temple. It turned his head but it didn’t drop him with a sprained neck like it should have. All that I accomplished was to shake loose of his grip, though as we staggered apart the whole front of my shirt tore away, exposing the Kevlar vest beneath.

With a snarl he darted forward and punched me square in the center of the chest. The blow slammed into me like a cruise missile and literally plucked me off the ground and hurled me ten feet through the air. I hit the flat front of the bomb housing near where Ghost had struck, and a twenty-one-gun salute burst along my spine. My feet landed flat but my knees buckled and I went down hard on my kneecaps and then fell forward onto my palms.

One punch.

He was unbelievably strong. Far stronger than the one I’d fought at the hotel.

Jesus Christ. It was all I could do to suck in half a lungful of air. Kevlar stops bullets, not foot-pounds of impact.

Move or die, bellowed my inner voices. Cop and Warrior, both of them shouting at once.

As the king of the Upierczi came at me I launched myself from hands and knees and tried to drive my shoulder all the way through his midsection. I’m two hundred pounds and six feet tall buck naked, and that’s a lot of PSI to absorb.

Turns out, not only was he strong as a bull, he could fight. He caught my charge and with both hands and a pivot of his hips sent me flying again. I collided with a line of Upierczi and we all went down. The impact tore a cry of pain from me; they merely grunted. They were laughing as we hit the ground and cold fingers were suddenly plucking at me.

“No!” bellowed Grigor. “Leave him be. This one is mine.”

Disappointment flickered on their faces, but that was quickly supplanted by evil smiles. They shoved me to my feet and one of them even steadied me and slapped dust from my clothes. He gave me a friendly grin and a wicked wink.

“Thanks,” I said, then I flicked my rapid-release folding knife from my pocket and whipped the blade across his throat. It wasn’t my best cut, not even that deep, but the whole knife had been soaked in garlic oil. Mr. Friendly staggered back, clutching his throat while he gurgled a wet scream.

Everybody watched him fall, watched the blood geyser from his throat and then fade to a trickle. Then every set of red eyes shifted to stare at me.

I moved away from them and dropped into a fighting crouch, blade ready for Grigor.

“Garlic,” he observed. “Clever trick.”

“Come over here and let me show you how it works.”

We all had a good laugh over that.

The other Upierczi began circling me again, laughing, taunting me, pretending to lunge at me. Some-friends of the dead, I guessed-told me how I would die and what I would feel. Not really necessary-Grigor was about to show me firsthand.

He lunged in and swatted at my knife. I evaded but only just. He was wary of the garlic on the blade and his hesitancy allowed me some seconds of breathing room. I pressed that advantage, leaping at him, slashing and hacking with a dozen overlapping cuts. But all I really cut was air.

Then he faked high and came in low and wickedly fast. He punched the bicep of my knife arm and the whole arm went dead. The knife clattered to the floor. Grigor rose from his crouch and hit me again in the chest. Same place. Same effect.

I flew backward into the stack of packing crates, splintering the side of one that was the size of a refrigerator.

In the movies, these crates fly apart like they’re made of balsa wood. In the real world they become a network of sharp splinters and jagged edges that gouge into you, tear your skin and your clothing, and pin you like a butterfly on a display board. I was stuck fast, my shoulder caught as surely as if an alligator had its jaws clamped around it.

I couldn’t free myself. Couldn’t escape.

Smiling, Grigor stalked toward me as all around us the vampires howled in the darkness.

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:18 a.m.

Violin felt a small vibration in her earpiece and she tapped it.

“Go,” she said very quietly. The sound of the refinery in full operation was like thunder. Two sentries walked along a catwalk twenty feet below her.

“Daughter,” said Lilith, “listen to me. We have new intelligence. We’ve cracked the Book of Shadows. It has everything the Order has ever done. Names, places, dates. Everything. Mr. Church is going to coordinate a worldwide police action against the members named in the most recent entries. We are going to tear the whole thing down!”

“Oh my God!” cried Violin. “That’s-”

“There’s more. You need to find Joe Ledger right now.”

“That’s what I’m trying to-”

“No, listen. No matter what it takes, no matter who gets in your way- find him. Church is certain Grigor is there.”

“ What?”

“The device is unarmed. Vox helped the Upierczi obtain and position the bombs, but he withheld the activation codes until they gave him the full spectrum of a gene therapy to cure his cancer. Upier 531. Daughter, they’ve made Hugo Vox one of them. Now Vox is fulfilling his end of the deal.

Grigor is there to activate the Aghajari bomb. He has a device for it, a code scrambler. He has to be stopped.”

“I’ll cut his-”

“Listen,” said Lilith sharply. “The code scrambler has all of the codes on it. All of them, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Daughter,” said Lilith, “we figured out where the other devices are. You have to get that code scrambler. If those other devices are activated… God.”

“Where are they?”

Lilith told her.

Violin had to clap a hand to her mouth.

Before another second passed she was moving. Leaping down to the catwalk, running nimbly along it, heading down toward the basement. Looking for Joe Ledger.

Looking for Grigor.

Racing to save the world.

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:21 a.m.

I bellowed my pain as I tried to wrench my flesh from the teeth of that shattered crate, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Grigor bent low, his body language becoming like some animalistic and predatory thing, vulpine, unnatural. His mouth was a wide, red slash in his pale face. He flashed out a hand and knotted my hair in his fist. Blood ran down my face, blinding my right eye, snaking hot lines inside my clothes. My arms were pinned by the jagged wood and I couldn’t reach my back-up knife clipped inside my pocket. He could have killed me right there and then. I knew it, he knew it. My life was nothing to him, an inconvenience at worst or an amusement at best. But he paused before going for the kill.

“Your world is going to die,” he snarled.