Page 52 of Incubus Vampire Slayer
Keeping alert, I hustle over with my head low and take a knee. It’s the security guard from before. His face is pale and drawn, his weathered eyes wide and lifeless. There’s a large, jagged tear in his neck. It’s dry. He’s been completely exsanguinated.
Just a couple days ago, finding something like this would have terrified me. I couldn’t get away from vampires fast enough. But seeing this man, who apparently was just trying to keep his family safe, killed and discarded like a crumpled-up junk food wrapper—it doesn’t scare me.
It makes me angry.
Some of that has to be coming from what I had been calling my monster. I’m not being seduced by it or anything, but there is definitely a more aggressive, determined part of me sharpening my thoughts.
I deliberately lean into its fire, because I am done running.
I get to my feet and stalk toward the back hallway, the one that will lead me to the sub-basements, until I get to the stairwell. Through the door’s rectangular wired-glass window, I see that the steps beyond have been loaded up with office furniture. There are a couple of gray filing cabinets set at a steep angle against the other side of the door, and they’re weighed down by a massive black vending machine, a metal office desk, and a bunch of office electronics.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a similar barricade over the trap door in the storage room downstairs. And even if there isn’t, I don’t want to waste the time crawling through the sewers to find out. Valiente obviously wants any intruders to take the elevator, hoping to trap them.
A blockade like this would probably be enough to keep vampires out, even with their paranormal strength—or at least slow their roll significantly. But I’m a lot more special than they are right now. And since I’m already inthe very limited window to free Collin, there’s no time to waste.
I bring my knee up high and slam my heel against the steel door with all I’ve got. It rips off its hinges and there’s so much momentum, the bulky furniture and equipment behind it go crashing down the stairwell. The chain reaction echoes out a rapid succession of thunderous bangs, each one louder than the last. If they didn’t know I was coming before, they do now, so I don’t hesitate to leap from the top of the stairs to the first landing, right onto the avalanche of office crap I created.
I’m crazy fast, super-strong, and have supernatural balance. What I don’t have is experience, so I use way too much oomph and continue flying forward after touchdown. I smack my shoulder against the far wall. Hard.
Trying to recover, I scramble my feet under me, which dislodges a printer and a fax machine, sending them tumbling down the next stairwell. Meanwhile, my ass falls back onto the side of the large metal desk with a loud thud.
Ow.
Okay. Not the best start. But I keep going.
The steps underneath are completely covered in file folders, staplers, office trash, and some smaller boxes from the storeroom. Super annoying, and these trip hazards might bog someone else down, but not me. Not right now. I choose to skip the stairs altogether. I bounce against the side wall,Matrix-style, to jump down to the next landing. And this time I nail it, barely skidding on the loose Christian magazines laid out on the floor.
The doorway at the bottom of the stairwell is stillwide-open from when I blasted through it the last time, so I leap the same way against the next side wall, land solidly right in front of the opening at the bottom?—
—and that’s when the bullets start flying.
The constricted entrance serves as a perfect choke point, and three Hunter-vampires crouched behind an overturned desk have set up an ambush in the hallway outside. The first two shots hit the edge of my shoulder and the outside of my thigh. Those might not have stopped me.
But the third rips straight into my chest.
The whole thing feels like it happens in slow motion. I hear the crack of the weapon, and a moment later, something hard and fast punches into my breastbone, which causes me to crumple backwards. Under the wound, a searing, white-hot sensation blooms out. It collapses into a tight, crushing fist inside me, just before my shoulder blades slam against the ground. I lose all my breath in the impact with the floor, and when I try to inhale, there’s only a high-pitched wheezing that fills me with nothing. I reflexively start to cough and am rewarded with sharp, stabbing pain and a metallic taste up the back of my throat. (That would be my blood.)
An old boxer famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
I’ve just been shot through my right lung.
18
I’m instantly grippedwith intense panic—I feel like I’m straight-up drowning—and my vision blurs. Cold sweat beads my forehead. I’m on the ground, helpless, but for whatever reason, the shots have stopped.
Then I hear the slam and snap of machined metal against metal. They’re reloading their Berettas.
I’m seriously hurt. If I hadn’t fed, this would be a killing blow. But I came in fully charged, and the squeezing pain inside shifts quickly to a warm tingling. I can’t quite tell exactly what’s happening inside my body, but in only a few moments, I’m able to suck a huge gulp of air into lungs that are no longer filled with razor blades. Now they’re only crazy sore. My shoulder and thigh have stopped hurting altogether. I quickly twist and throw myself back onto the stairs and out of the line of fire—just as another volley of thunderous rounds peppers the ground and walls, barely missing me.
I check my back. There’s a hole in my sparkly polo, surrounded by a splotch of blood, so it looks like thebullet went clean through. The skin peeking out has already healed, but it takes another several seconds on those lower steps, crouched and trembling, before it feels like I can breathe normally again. I’m shaky and legit freaked out, I still taste iron in my mouth, and I certainly won’t be able to wear this torn nightmare-fuel shirt to any clubs. But I don’t feel wounded anymore.
Still, let’s not do that again.
Incubus powers might be amazing, but clearly I’m not invulnerable. I don't have Collin’s video game–style life meter to check, but it definitely feels like I’ve burned up a good chunk of juice. Maybe 25%?
It’s not enough to stop me (I’m not going to give up that easy! I’m not!) but I need to be smarter. Maybe I’ve been leaning into cockiness as a way to ignore fear, but Valiente is clearly a planner. This ambush isn’t likely to be the only obstacle he’s set up.
I reflect on the brief flash of the hallway I was able to see before I got hit. The warrior vampires in their heavy black Kevlar were behind another metal desk turned on its side—and they aren’t rushing in. That means I know exactly where they are. And once I’m up to them, I should be able to use the desk as cover myself. I just need to be fast enough.
