“Thanks for doing this,” Myka Bremer said, sitting on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the valley beyond, unwrapping her sandwich from its plastic package. “I have no idea how I’d do this without magical support.”
“I’mfustppybeehey.”
Myka turned around to Isabella, sitting cross-legged on her bedroll, trying to jam an entire sandwich down her gullet. “That doesn’t seem safe.”
She did it anyway, against all odds, and spent a solid two minutes chewing through the focaccia and the fillings, and gulped it all down, looking remarkably satisfied. “I love Benedict’s so much.”
“You’re not going to throw up halfway through a fight, are you?”
“I’m going to need another one after if anything.” She stood up and peered towards the large gothic castle in the distance. The smog in the sky made it look a lot more threatening than it would otherwise seem. “I didn’t know vampires actually lived in a big old castle in a place with no sunlight.”
“Well it’s not all vampires.” Myka flashed her own fangs. “But I did kind of spend my early vampire-hood there. Very cool, but also very musty. Being in a clan has perks, like having access to donated blood all the time.” She took half her sadwich off with a single bite.
“How do we get in?”
“There’s a big open roof area on the east side. If you can fly me in, then it’s not too far to the throne room and wherever the Marquess is hiding.”
“She seems nasty.”
She took another bite. “Aki was always a bitch. She killed the last clan leader, so she’s just getting comeuppance. Problem is she’s militarised the clan.”
“If you kill her, does that make you queen?”
“I…” Myka’s gaze drifted to the castle as well. “I don’t know. It’s not like a highlander thing we have going on. I honestly don’t think they’ll want me. They’re very icky about outsiders and I’ve been away far too long.”
“But you’re helping them, right?”
“They’re still my family. Even if they don’t like my employers.”
“Can’t you just tell them you quit?”
“Once a narc, always a narc.”
“...why does that sound familiar?” Isabella cocked her head, immediately lost in thought.
Myka rolled her eyes, finished her lunch and picked up the binoculars beside her, taking aim with them at the parapets in the distance. Altergott Castle was a product of UCF handiwork, which meant it was designed with some old daimyo’s obsession with the conquests of the spheres, and possibly what colonies existed on Turpentine in the beginning. She had never heard the actual history of how it fell into the vampires’ hands, and perhaps that was her one regret: not going back to see how it all started. She just hoped the library was still intact, so she could at least read about it.
You’d love that, wouldn’t you Lyle? she thought.
Point was, it was going to be difficult to get inside. They could fly in, yes, but there was no telling if the anti-air missiles hidden in the surrounding slopes were still functional, and if Aki had figured them out. Part of her hoped the old man had locked her out, or done anything to screw her over before he had died, but the rationality in her head put its foot down and told her it was unlikely. He had been taken out by surprise, and in all likeliness, Aki had planned the coup for who knew how long.
Isabella finally snapped out of her trance. “You know, thinking about it, I think my parents might actually run some kind of seafood cartel.”
“Wait, what?”
“I’ll go get our guns.” She crawled back into their small tent, rummaging around inside a large duffel bag, leaving her lower half sticking out of the entrance flaps.
Myka didn’t mind the view, but right now she made the choice to scan the mountainside, in an effort to gather any last bits of information they might have missed over the past week camping.
And yet, nothing could prepare her for what came next.
Before she could ask for her weapon, a small army-green truck came bursting out of the forest, clambering onto the winding dirt asphalt that led up to the gates at the edge of the castle grounds. The perimeter guards immediately went into high alert, some of the vampires in combat gear firing at the vehicle, but at the speed it was going, they were too late.
As soon as the truck reached the gate, it turned into a massive fireball, smashing both the gate and nearby defenders into smithereens, the sound of it echoing off the sides of the valley.
“Holy fuck!” Myka pulled Isabella out of the tent, in her hands the opened duffle bag. She grabbed her own gun - a coil-powered bullpup repeater with a high capacity, one of the best money could buy - and slung it over herself, before handing Isabella her marksman rifle and zipping the bag closed. “We have to go!”
“Who are those guys?” Isabella peered down into the valley.
“I dunno! Doesn’t matter! Just fly us over, yeah?”
Isabella grinned, and in a flash, a pair of flaming wings burst from her back, and she grabbed both the bag and Myka by her harness, taking off with unnatural force and gliding towards Altergott Castle.
Far below, Myka could see an armoured personnel carrier speeding down the same path as the destroyed truck, nudging both the wreckage and the ruined gate out of the way, its autocannon already firing on anyone dumb enough to still be in the gardens in the front, each explosive shots sending bits of trees and vampires flying all over the place. “Whoever it is, they’re not kidding around.”
“Hold on!” Isabella suddenly dropped her altitude just as a stream of rounds raked the sky where they had been, and twisted again to avoid another volley from an emplacement on the hillside.
“Speed up! If we get close enough we’ll stop firing!” Myka shouted, though she wasn’t sure she actually had to for Isabella to get it.
Isabella dipped again, getting dangerously close to the firefight between the heavily armed soldiers that had come out of the APC and the gardens’ automated defenses, before swooping upwards again and almost slamming Myka into a gargoyle at the edge of the roof.
“Watch it!”
“Sorry!”
“There!” She pointed down at a section of flat roof, where a vampire was manning a mounted machine gun that was turning to track them. “Drop me!”
“Okie!” He swooped in close, and dropped both Myka and the bag behind the gun.
Myka rolled as she landed, bringing her gun to bear and putting a bullet into the machine gun operator, the electromagnetically propelled shot quiet as a whisper, yet punched directly through his chest and threw him off the gunner seat. As she saw his wound begin to close, his body patching itself up, she took aim again and fired two more into his head, effectively ending him. Regeneration or not, few living things got back up from a good old direct strike to the nervous system.
Isabella folded her wings away and landed right beside her. “Good shot!”
Myka poked her head into one of the windows that looked out onto their section of roof, only to pull it back when a hail of bullets destroyed the glass and punched through the wooden door, just to be sure. “Fuck. Okay, I need you to flank them from the sky. Stick close to the buildings so you don’t get shredded, yeah?”
“Got it.” Isabella leapt over the parpets, flying around the side of the building.
Myka pressed herself into the wall beside the broken window, just waiting.
When she heard Isabella’s DMR go off, blowing through another window on the other side of the room and the sound of returning automatic fire in that direction, she stepped onto the windowsill and hopped inside, dropping the closest vampire with a burst that stitched them across their middling before rolling into cover behind the pillar they had been using.
Isabella fired again, this time actually hitting one of the defenders, the back of their head painting the opposite wall, and Myka popped out to fire, crippling the second-last vampire in the room, before aiming down and killing the injured one at her feet with another headshot.
Hot, burning metal ripped through the side of her neck, and she fired wildly, clipping the last defender as they both fell. Myka clutched her neck, inching herself towards the pillar, feeling the regeneration begin as the muscle stitched itself back together with the blood in her second stomach, which she had filled in preparation. She heard Isabella crash in through the window, and saw the swipe of a flaming sword, and then the room was quiet again.
Myka got to her feet, the bleeding in her neck stemmed, and realised that thankfully the rifle round had gone right through. She flexed the two halves of her lower jaw for a second, making sure her blood tube wasn’t damaged, and stepped out from behind the pillar with her hands raised. “It’s me!”
Isabella gave her the thumbs up, the flaming sword in the other hand fading out of existence. She looked at the reinforced shutter over the door to the next room. “I’ll go get the breaching charge.”
Myka stepped over the ashes where Isabella had obliterated the last vampire, and the gash in the ground. “Can’t you just use the sword?”
“It doesn’t last very long.” She jogged back out onto the roof, and Muka couldn’t help but admire her physique.
God, step on me.
Myka quickly brushed the stray thoughts aside and got on the ground, putting her ear to the heavy stone floor. There was definitely the staccato of gunfire downstairs - the invaders had made it inside. They were running out of time.
Isabella dropped the duffel bag next to them, and removed the expensive, jet-black syringe with pistol grip from inside. She drew a big rectangle with dark-coloured paste, wide enough for the both of them, on the metal, and plugged in a small metal nub into one of the corners.
Myka removed the detonator button and handle from the bag, flicking the cover on the trigger open. “Stand back.”
Isabella skipped behind one of the pillars, only poking her head out like a curious little animal.
She pressed the button, and the nub glowed brilliantly, setting the paste alight at a rapid pace, the reaction spreading through the entire frame and turning it into the temperature of the Sun’s surface immediately. The metal became slag, dripping down from the breach, and setting into recesses they burned into the floor. As soon as the slag ran off, Myka stepped up and kicked the rectangle of metal, and apparently the door underneath as well, down into the other room.
That was immediately met with shots from the ceiling-mounted gatling gun turret, the rounds in its relatively short burst creating pockmarks in the floor as Myka hurried back out, throwing herself on the ground.
“I got this.” Isabella ran inside, the flaming sword appearing once again in her hand. There was the sound of gunfire and tearing metal, before the turret hit the floor with a heavy thump.
Myka went back through the hole in the door, aiming her gun around, but lowered it once she saw Isabella kicking at the remains of the turret. Hot damn. “That should be the throne room.” She nodded at the door on the other side of the room, redirecting Isabella's gaze so she could stare at her more.
Isabella put a hand on the doorknob, jiggling it slightly. “Huh. Not locked. Is she expecting us?”
“Just be careful.” Myka stacked up on the other side of the doorway, having reloaded her weapon with another magazine from the duffel bag, and once Isabella threw it open, moved in, her gun pointing in all the places she thought someone might be hiding.
The throne room was brightly lit, and had a dozen computer screens hanging from a rig in the ceiling, all surrounding the throne. The previous occupant had told her how it was initially a war room, a place for the daimyo’s best and brightest to gather and wage war across the multiverse. But that was all she had been told, and he had never used it himself.
The first body was a vampire’s leaning on a railing that overlooked a lower part of the room. Two more were at the bottom, clutching at their faces, their skins flecked with reflective material and blood oozing from every orifice. Myka clamped a hand over her mouth and nose. There was only one thing that killed them like that.
“A little late, I think,” a man’s voice said.
Myka and Isabella turned their weapons towards the throne, Myka still one-handing her gun. A figure emerged from behind it, tall and dressed in a neat cream suit, though much of it was bloodstained. His hair was dark and messy, and the scar down the middle of his chin told him he was just as much a vampire as she was. “Who the hell are you?” she asked through her hand.
He bowed gracefully, showing both hands to indicate his unarmed status. “Caleb Cutter. I represent Miss Vittoria Beumers of the Spades syndicate.”
Myka lowered her gun. “The Spades? Wait, are your people attacking the castle?”
“My cavalry, I suppose. I’ve been a prisoner here awhile,” Cutter said. “Relations gone wrong and such. Fortunately, I smuggled a silver blade in for self-defense. Aren’t the two of you from the Divisions?”
“Not anymore.” Myka walked around the throne, taking her hand off her face. There was another body behind the throne, though not dead. Aki had only begun to bleed from the eyes, the silver stiletto Cutter mentioned lying on the floor beside her, covered in blood.
She gasped at Myka, unable to breathe as the argent particles swirling in her blood slowly disrupted every part of her physiology, the weakness coded into their kind carrying out a self-termination protocol exactly as their creators had intended. If Cutter had wanted her dead, she would be, too.
Myka put a round in Aki’s treacherous face, and looked at the vampire man. “What now?”
“I would suggest you deactivate all the defenses. And I hope in the future your clan will be more…amenable to business dealings?”
Myka bit her lip, baring her fangs. “See you around.”
“Merry Christmas, your Majesty.” Cutter slipped out of the side door of the throne room, and she could hear him speaking to the troops that must have arrived outside. Isabella’s aim stuck to the door until they could no longer hear the Spades.
Myka sighed, and put herself on the throne. The controller portion of the armrest made it easy to navigate the myriad of menus before her, somewhat familiar due to the old man’s teachings. “That went well.”
“I don’t trust them,” Isabella said.
“Me neither.”
Isabella just laughed, in the way that only the cutest of girls could. Maybe she would make her a princess of the realm, just to keep her coming back.
It really was a merry Christmas.
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