"This is really creepy," Lacey said.
Joe had to agree. What was going on here? Unless.. . maybe the gunfire outside had roused them. At least none of them was able to get up.
No time to waste. He dropped the book bag on her abdomen and pulled out the heavy maul and one of the stakes. Carole stepped up beside him and played her beam over the woman, illuminating the corner of the room like daylight.
Joe lifted the stake. This wasn't how he'd expected this to go. He hadn't counted on his victims staring him in the face as he pounded stakes through their chests.
But this was no time for squeamishness. Steeling himself, he placed the sharpened tip against her chest, just to the left of her breastbone. He'd never done this before, but he imagined that was where the heart sat. As he raised the hammer, the woman hissed and grabbed the stake with both of her hands.
Joe jumped back in surprise, releasing his own grip.
"Dear God!" Carole gasped. "She can move!"
Joe recovered and snatched the stake back from her grasp. He broke her grip easily.
"But she's weak," he said.
A deafening blast echoed through the basement and Joe felt a stabbing impact, like a punch, in his back.
A shot!
Another blast as he half turned—another blow, this time to his shoulder.
"Get down!" he shouted to Carole and Lacey. "Way down!"
He feared the ricochets in this concrete box could be almost as deadly as a direct hit. He turned and found the shooter, the pistol wavering in his hand as he aimed another shot. Joe ducked to his left, darted to the man's side, and snatched the gun from his hand.
"Hey!" Lacey cried, popping her head up. She pointed to a guard near her. "This one's going for his gun too!"
"Get it!" Joe shouted. He turned and lunged for another of the woman's guards who was lifting his automatic, moving like someone in a slow-motion movie. Joe tore it from his grasp. "Get their guns! All of them."
He saw Lacey struggling with her guard. She had a two-handed grip on the barrel. Joe was just about to step in and help when she twisted it from his grasp. He turned and saw Carole pulling a pistol from another guard's belt before he could reach it. Joe disarmed two more, then stepped over to the seventh male, the one with the cot against the opposite wall, and found him unarmed.
"You!" Joe cried when he spotted his ruined left eye.
This was one of Franco's guards, the one who'd stripped him naked before taking him to his boss. What had Franco called him?
"Artemis!" That was it. "What are you doing here?"
The good eye widened. "You know me?" the vampire rasped.
That surprised Joe for an instant, then he remembered that his face had been changed by the sun. He wished he knew what he looked like.
He jabbed one of the pistols at him. "Too bad you didn't bring Franco with you. When we finish with the lady, you're next!"
This was perfect: the woman and Franco's right-hand man in one morning. He turned and stalked back toward the guards, snatching up a couple of machetes as he reached them. "Take their machetes too. Don't leave them with anything that can be used against us."
He tossed the pistols and machetes toward the foot of the steps. Carole and
Lacey did the same. He was most relieved to have the guns out of play. The bullets hadn't affected him, but Carole and Lacey's lives had been on the line.
"A little help over here," Lacey said. Her voice sounded strained.
Joe looked and saw that the woman had turned over and was trying to crawl out of her bed. Lacey was struggling to hold her back. Carole leaned in to help.
As Joe moved toward the women, one of the guards rolled out of bed and landed on the floor in front of him. Another to his right did the same. Both started a slow-motion bellycrawl toward their mistress. Joe stepped on the back of the one in front of him and rejoined Carole and Lacey.
"They're coming for us!" Lacey said, an edge of panic in her voice. She was clutching the woman's right arm while Carole held the left from the other side of the bed. The woman writhed slowly in their grasp. "Let's do this and get the hell out of here!"
"Yes, Joseph," Carole said, calm but grave. "You haven't much time."
"All right, all right." Wasn't anything going to go according to plan?
He grabbed the stake and maul. No hesitation this time. He placed the point of the stake over the woman's writhing chest, raised the maul—
Lacey let out a yelp and released the woman's right arm. "Something just touched—damn! There's one here on the floor! He's trying to grab my leg!"
She half turned and began kicking at the guard who'd crawled to their feet.
Joe stared in shock, then looked around. Others were on their way, inching toward them along the floor. This kind of loyalty and devotion was almost unimaginable, especially in the undead.
"Joseph," Carole said. She had both the woman's arms now. "Do it. Now."
Joe nodded. In a single swift move he placed the stake and hammered it home. The heavy steel head of the maul drove the point all the way through the woman and into the mattress beneath. She writhed, kicked, spasmed, then stiffened and lay still.
Done. No time to waste. Move on. First get the guard by Lacey, and then—
"What the hell—?" Lacey said.
Joe looked down. The guard at Lacey's feet was writhing on the floor. The other five were doing the same. This lasted maybe ten seconds, and then they lay as still as their mistress.
Lacey nudged one with the toe of her shoe. "Dead. They're all__"
She looked up at Joe, her eyes wide. "Unk! This is what happened the other night, right upstairs. A bunch of undead guards—supposedly they belonged to someone named Gregor—they suddenly dropped dead, just like these guys.
It was right after we heard a boom and ..." She turned to Carole. "You told us you killed a vampire that night. Blew him to bits, right?"
"Right. But I never knew his name."
Lacey nodded. "I'll bet it was Gregor. You killed him across town, and his guards died upstairs in the Post Office. We killed this one, and her guards die a few seconds later. What's the connection? Is there some sort of spell that binds the guards to their masters? A life-and-death bond that connects them? Is that why they're so loyal?"
Memories of the Empire State Building flashed through Joe's head.
"When I mentioned to Franco how loyal his guards seemed, he told me it wasn't out of selflessness or personal regard for him—it was self-preservation."
"That was his word?" Lacey said. "Self-preservation? Well then that's it. That's how they bind their guards to them: if their master dies, they die."