The Blood Order (Fanghunters Book Two) (47 page)

"Well find her, you fool!" Leviah boomed.

Through a tiny crack on her right, Trixie could see his giant feet. From where their voices emanated, it meant Sammy was on her left.

She placed her fingers along the edges of a panel just ahead of her; she eased it up and shifted it across. She then took a peek out of the hole. Both vamps came into view; they were directly below her. If she was quick, she could take one of them down. She reached for her holy water gun with one remaining dart. She could only remove one from the game; it would be impossible to take out the other without holy water. She had to pick wisely. She really wanted to take out Leviah, but he was unarmed. Sammy was packing a handgun; it made more sense to eliminate that danger first.

She poked the barrel of her dart gun over the edge of the hole and aimed the muzzle at Sammy's head. She closed her eye and tongued her bottom lip.
Careful, Trixie,
she told herself.
Careful.

She steadied herself then--

Leviah's feet shifted from her view; he headed back toward where Dad was seated. Sammy then moved away from her too.

Dammit,
she vented to herself. She huffed and pulled back her dart gun. There was no time to hang around. Eventually, they'd glance up and see the missing panel. She got a quick fix on everyone, mapping the room out in her head. Leviah was back behind her with Dad, and most likely Dom too. Sammy was across to her right. She needed him to come back this way. Now.

And he did. He took a tentative step her way, his gun at the ready, his head shifting left and right. Trixie's eyes widened. Sammy's frame began to fill the gap ahead of her.

A little more, a little more,
she urged, her heart picking up pace.
Come this way, little pig. Come to Mummy.

He took one more step; she grinned.
Bingo.

She dived headfirst through the open panel. She lunged through the air with a scream. The whole room recoiled in unison. She slammed square on Sammy's head and back, sending him crashing into the floor, his body breaking her fall. He groaned in agony. Trixie rolled away from his prone body and leaped to her feet before Leviah even had a chance to turn. She kicked Sammy's hand hard; his gun flew across the room. She then bent down, wrapped a quick arm around his neck, and yanked him upward. "Come on! Get up!" she screeched.

Sammy did as he was told.

From behind, Trixie poked her dart gun into his cheek, holding him in a classic hostage position. She faced the room full on. Dad and Dom were staring back at her, their faces riddled with disbelief. A broody Leviah was stood between them, hands on hips. Behind them all, Nixon was hanging out of the elevator, snoring his ass off. Over to the left, a decapitated body bled freely.

Vincent's eyes widened. "Trixie!" he gasped with a hope-filled smile.

Trixie returned the grin. "Hi, Daddy," she responded in a pleasant voice, which was totally out of place. "How do I look?" she asked with a twitchy smile.

"Like you've been through a lot," Vincent replied in a voice laced with lament.

"Now you see why I don't go on jobs. You
always
get your clothes ruined." She glanced over at Dom. "Hey, Dom."

"Hey, Trixie," Dom replied in a solemn tone. "You still look hot to me by the way."

"Really? Even in these ragged clothes?"

"Ragged I can deal with," he told her.

"
Aw,
you'll make me bawl any second." She then looked around her. "So, what we got here?" she asked with a scowl. "More vamps to kill?" She jammed her dart gun into Sammy's cheek. "I'm kinda getting to like it!"

"Take it easy, Trixie," Sammy said in a nervy voice.

Leviah then stepped forward.

"Uh, uh, uh!" Trixie scolded him, flicking her dart gun his way.

Leviah stopped moving.

"You come closer and I'll kill you both," Trixie warned. "I got plenty of ammo."

Leviah just stared at her, his eyes glimmering. Trixie knew what his game was. "And that won't work either," she told him. "I'm protected."

Leviah switched off his eyes, his mouth drooping.

Trixie grinned. She then turned her attention back to Sammy, sticking the muzzle of her dart gun back into his face. "What was it
you
called me earlier?" she asked him. "Trixie Beau-
chump
?"

Sammy sent her a nervous chuckle. "Hey, I-I-I didn't mean it. It was just a joke."

"Just so you know for future reference, jokes are supposed to make one laugh," Trixie informed him. "And besides," she then whispered in his ear, "it's Beau-
CHAMP
, asshole!" Without warning, she shoved him forward, her face contorted in a snarl. Sammy stumbled over on his front between the two chairs holding Vincent and Dom. He spun onto his back like a performing seal.

With a wild
-
eyed glare, Trixie aimed her dart gun.

Sammy threw up a palm. "No, no, no, no--"

Trixie pulled the trigger. The holy water dart jabbed him in the leg. In the next instant, he was convulsing like a fish on the deck of a trawler.

Trixie gave him a pleasant smile. "That's for calling me a bitch," she said as she watched him die.

Leviah then went to make a move for her. Trixie flipped her dart gun up, aiming it straight at his chest. "Not so fast!" she snapped. Leviah stopped dead in his tracks. He backed up a couple of steps, his hands out to the sides. There was a half-smile on his face, but his eyes were narrowed, giving him an appearance of shrewdness.

Trixie limped toward him. "So, you're the famous Leviah I've heard so much about," she said up to him in a voice laced with irony. "I was expecting someone taller," she quipped even though he towered over her.

"You've done well to make it this far," Leviah declared, that shrewd half-smile still remaining on his face. "I must commend you."

"Thanks, but I've received enough medals in my lifetime, Jack."

"We can... work this out," he told her.

"Oh really? How?"

"You give me the relic, and you're free to leave. All of you." He grinned and his fangs appeared. They were the biggest, sharpest fangs she'd ever seen. She grimaced.

"Oh, the relic?" she then said with a casual laugh, breaking the spell. She reached into her pocket and whipped it out. "You mean this thing?" she asked any semblance of a smile vanishing from her tired, dirty features.

Leviah's eyes widened. Trixie rolled the relic tantalizingly back and forth between her thumb and index finger, goading him.

Leviah lost his cool. His eyes whirled with eagerness "Yes. Give it to me!" he demanded, holding out a shaking hand. "You've no clue what that is!"

Trixie raised a contemptuous upper lip. "No can do, Jack!" she said before throwing it down on the floor.

Then Vincent's eyes widened. "Trixie! No!"

But, Trixie didn't listen. She ruthlessly raised her remaining boot and stamped it down hard. The relic crushed under her foot.

Vincent gasped in horror.

"No!" Leviah wailed, grief-stricken. He dropped to his knees with a loud thud, his hands curled in front of his face, his eyes fixed on the crushed relic; it was just a small pile of dust.

Trixie then aimed her dart gun at him with menace, her face a wild-eyed glare.

Leviah flinched toward the dart gun. He stared up at her, hate brimming in his eyes. He parted his lips, his fangs clenched together in sheer rage.

"Trixie!" Vincent then shouted out. "You can't kill him. He's a son of Moroz. You mustn't do it!"

Trixie kept her dart gun aimed at Leviah. She then flicked her eyes over to Vincent's pleading face, then back to the enraged Leviah. A surge of anger rushed up her chest. "
I'm
not gonna kill him," she declared, her stare never leaving Leviah. She then threw her empty dart gun to the side before dipping both hands into her belt and pulling out the two sonic booms she had stashed there. With a quick flick of both thumbs, the sonic booms were activated. She threw them behind her toward the windows.

Leviah watched her with a bemused frown, his eyes darting left and right following the sonic booms. A second later, an intense, high-pitched wail tore through the room, assaulting the eardrums of all the occupants bar Vincent. Leviah threw his hands up to his ears, his face contorting in pain. Trixie already had her ears plugged, protecting her from the infernal noise. She raced over to Dom; his head was snapped back in agony, the veins in his neck like chord, his tied hands stopping him from protecting his ears. Trixie did it for him instead; she clasped her bandaged palms over his ears and squeezed. Vincent just watched on in bemusement, the only thing audible to him the groans and screams of the others.

The sonic booms hummed and vibrated on the floor less than a foot from the windows, the ear-splitting noise reaching an agonizing crescendo. The tinted glass then began to tremble and vibrate alongside them. Vincent watched the glass with a slack jaw. His eyes bulged with horror. "No!" he shouted, just as the windows finally succumbed to the pressure. They exploded outward, glass showering down to the ground ninety-seven stories below. A sudden flood of glorious dawn sunlight washed over everything in the room. Including Leviah.

Leviah froze as if the light had turned him to stone.

He then released a massive gasp of unbridled terror (or was it unmitigated awe) as the burning sun lit up his irises. "
Uh!
"

Before he could even attempt an escape, his arms were flung back, his chest thrown forward, his silk robe rippling on the air behind him like a cloak. His hands curled up into juddering claws that tremored alongside his chest. His jaws then snapped open, his fangs gleaming in the morning sun for the first and last time.

He became still for half a second before releasing an almighty scream that drowned out the unyielding screech of the sonic booms; it rocketed off all the walls of the chamber and back again. The cacophony was severed once his entire body combusted in an intense conflagration as if he'd been doused in gas and a match thrown his way. The flames ravaged him like greedy leeches, the entire chamber glowing orange-yellow. He engaged in an exotic dance of compulsive hip shakes, while flailing his arms in a futile attempt to extinguish the blaze. It just grew stronger. He wailed in a hot mix of pleasure and pain.

Trixie held firm, protecting Dom's hurting ears; she watched on in with a morbid fixation as Leviah melted before her very eyes, the acrid stench of smoldering, putrid flesh bombarding her sinuses. She turned away from the horrific spectacle while still shutting off Dom's ears.

The sun-induced inferno continued to eat Leviah alive. His skin blistered and popped, his flesh sizzled like barbequed meat. His hair frazzled away in a rash of intense flames, his face now a mask of fire. Within the combustion, his bulging eyes still burned with agonized life. But not for long. The pressure from within built up to boiling point. He released a final piercing scream, just as his eyeballs exploded under the pressure; they burst out of his skull in twin jets of blood. His body then slumped forward; he hit the floor with a massive thud. The fires continued to lick away at every little piece of him. Whatever charred flesh remained was singed away into the air, the bones beneath becoming exposed. They rattled and danced as if alive.

The bones continued to jangle and chatter before they began to give way, melting from the marrow out. A green/black putrid substance like tumors oozed out alongside any dissolving cartilage; it thinned to a sticky pool that spread across the floor. The liquid then heated and sizzled like boiling milk before evaporating into small wisps of smoke that stank like grilled rotten meat.

What remained of Leviah's bones then rapidly dried and cracked under the heat as if the chamber had been turned into an oven. The sun was unrelenting with its onslaught; its power managed to dissolve the desiccated bones to fine dust as if time had been sped up by a millennia. A gust of wind blew through the smashed windows; it picked up the bone dust and swept it away, leaving just a dry
,
dark green patch and Leviah's massive fangs. They sat there like tusks, the only remnants of the head of the Blood Order.

The mighty Leviah was no more.

And then everything went calm.

The sonic booms cut out, releasing Dom from their agonizing din. The chamber fell silent; only the ubiquitous snoring of General Nixon audible.

Trixie puffed her cheeks. "Well, that was pretty gnarly," she said, her chest heaving.

Vincent looked from the remains of Leviah to Trixie. "Oh, Trixie, what have you done?"

"Saved your ass," she answered, staggering over to him. She untied him from the chair.

Vincent stood up with a groan, grabbed her, and gave her a hug. She wanted to hug him back but was way too exhausted.

Tears began streaming down Vincent's face. "I love you," he declared.

"I love you too, Daddy," Trixie whispered.

Vincent pulled back.

"Now, excuse me while I just die," Trixie said and then collapsed.