“How are we going in?” Allyson asked of the Captain.
He looked over at Eliza. “I don’t suppose she was able to pass on where she was?”
Eliza coughed again. “No. In the dream, she was in a tower. Not exactly (cough) applicable here.”
Allyson wished Eliza would stay behind, but the vampire maiden would go through the fires of hell to rescue Veronica, and she wasn’t going to be dissuaded. “Wait. Didn’t you say that she was burned . . . at the end of the dream?” Allyson hated reminding her friend of that.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe the tower wasn’t a message. Maybe the fire was.”
“Are you thinking the furnace?”
Allyson rubbed her jaw. “Could be. It tends to be a favorite venue for torture for the unimaginative. The heat saps your will almost as much as . . .” Allyson stopped when she saw Eliza lift her head up and sniff the air. Then she took off running silently through the tall grass, her energy apparently having returned.
“Or,” Allyson continued, “we could just follow her.”
The strike-force had to put everything they had into keeping up with the suddenly lively vampire. They found themselves staring at a large dark opening.
“This is where they took her in. And I hear the hum of engines.” Eliza was staring at that opening. It was a hundred yards across open ground, but she felt she could cross it quickly.
“Boss, how were you planning on getting in the door? It’s probably fortified and . . .” Allyson was stopped again.
Eliza turned, looked at Thug and smiled.
—————– ————-
60 seconds later . . .
—————– ————-
You could almost feel bad for the few guards and personnel who were occupying the vehicle hangar when Thug made an entrance. Almost. One blast from his cannon left a gaping, fiery hole in what had once been a fairly respectable door. And before the fire and smoke had subsided enough for any survivors to see through, Eliza had jumped through the hole. She was followed shortly by her friends, Captain Corbin and his strike team. As soon as the initial explosion was heard, the Captain broadcast the coordinates of the base back to the U. S. military. Even if their mission failed, American forces would assault the base within hours.
Eliza realized that there was little time to waste. Once the breach had been made, the entire compound had been enveloped in the noise of base sirens. She needed to find Veronica before someone decided to “cut their losses” and kill the hostage. As her supporting cast began the systematic elimination of the occupants of the garage, Eliza located two guards attempting to make their escape. She pulled out the somewhat illegal rail-gun pistol that Veronica had obtained for her and blasted them both in the knee. She pounced on them and disarmed them at a terrifying speed. She grabbed both by the throat. With her eyes firmly locked on one of her captives, she started smashing the head of the other against the concrete floor. And she kept smashing until the pool of red under that unfortunate victim’s head started spilling into a nearby drain. Then she finally spoke.
“You fuckers took a hostage . . . a woman. Tell me where she is and I’ll let you deal with them,” she said, indicating the advancing team, “instead of me.” Eliza’s eyes were as cold as ice and her voice was dead flat. Then the captured guard, who was on the verge of wetting himself, saw the fangs of the creature in front of him start to grow. He started to stammer and stutter and finally gave her the directions she was asking for. Then she knocked him cold and took off down the hall. She fired up her kinetic-force riot shield, letting a small wall of energy crackle and shimmer in front of her. She bowled her way down one hallway, running over and smashing anyone in her way. Guards and local militia were pouring out all over the place. She sensed someone was following her, but she didn’t have time to look back. She burst into a large room, and her blood ran cold with what she saw.
Against the far wall were two cages that were similar to the ones back at Fort Crass, and both seemed to be occupied by Living Gems. Eliza hadn’t been aware that the Purity had more than one, but she was apparently mistaken. Standing in front of the cages were two men. One was dressed in the most stereotypical wizard’s robes that anyone could steal from a b-grade movie dressing room. He was a gaunt fellow, but his narrow face and eyes held instant hatred for Eliza, and she couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same human that had closed the portal between dimensions. The other man was in full military regalia, and Eliza figured him to be either the local warlord or some high-up yahoo in the Purity military. But neither of them caught her attention for long.
Veronica Adams was chained to a metal ring embedded in the middle of the concrete floor. Her hair was mangled, her face bruised almost beyond recognition, and both eyes were swollen shut. There were cuts and odd burn marks all over her naked body, and it was obvious that a number of fingers were bent at unnatural angles. She was kneeling in her own filth, and she was horribly gaunt. Someone had taken their time working Veronica over, and they had been good at what they did.
The human wizard ran to the side of one of the cages and began punching at a control panel while the military man started to pull his weapon. Eliza reached down into her own battered and weary body, summoning her strength once more and charged the man. She knocked the gun from his hand as soon as he drew it, but he landed a massive blow with his fist on the side of her head that almost knocked her senseless. The two struggled for what seemed like forever. Finally, Eliza used the last of her strength to punch her adversary in the throat, crushing his windpipe. She looked up, trying to locate the wizard. And then she was struck by lightning.
It was agony as bolts of electricity rocked her frame. She briefly saw the wizard holding a Gem, which appeared to be the source of the blasts. It was a black, smooth orb with streaks of off-white color marring its surface. It was the Spear of God, a Tiger’s Eye gem that was supposed to be used for a spell of “heavenly fire.” Eliza was thrown clear across the room and smashed into a wall with such force that the metal buckled under the impact. Her lungs and skin were almost literally on fire. This is what Veronica’s pain-riddled mind had been trying to convey in the dream.
“You pathetic, inhuman whore!” the wizard cackled. “You would challenge me?!? You have no place here! You should have gone back to your own stinking hell dimension when you had the chance!” The man seemed to be teetering on the other side of insanity, but that didn’t stop him from wielding the orb effectively as another series of short blasts left Eliza’s almost helpless body smoldering on the floor. The man raised the orb melodramatically over his head. “I’ll show you! I’ll show you all . . .” Suddenly, he fell to the floor with a sick thud. Valar stood behind him wielding a monkey wrench.
[[ Oh shut up! ]] he said in his native tongue. He had to admit that the act of physical violence had made him feel a little more . . . masculine.
Eliza’s blood was still boiling from the attack. Her skin was blistering where she had been struck and she had lost muscle control. She lay on the ground, no more than a few feet from Veronica’s bound body. Had she arrived too late? And even if Veronica survived, Eliza knew in her heart that she herself was dying.
Suddenly Allyson, Dennis and a number of invading forces burst into the room. Allyson was shouting.
“We’ve got to get her out of . . .” It was then that the woman saw her boss and friend lying almost completely motionless on the floor, wisps of smoke rising from her jumpsuit. Then she saw Veronica. “Good God,” she muttered and hurried to the two women. It became clear that even if the U. S. had been willing to negotiate that these people were never planning on letting Veronica go. Her chains weren’t locked to metal ring in the floor; they were wielded to it. “We’ve got to get these off!” she shouted. Dennis started looking around for some tools to break the chains.
“Where . . .” came a dim voice from Veronica’s mouth. “Where’s Eliza? I know she’s here,” she said, her voice trailing off.
“She’s here,” Allyson said, choking back a tear. “She just can’t talk right now.”
“Not . . . not fair,” Veronica mumbled. “Too close . . . too much . . .”
The doors smashed inward as Thug made his way in, followed by Kelik and a couple of soldiers. He was riddled with holes, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Dennis grabbed the wrench from Valar, who had turned his attention to deactivating the other force cage. Dennis took the wrench and was looking for something like a wedge or a spike, but Thug came up with a simpler solution. The troll grabbed the excess chain, pulling it and the metal ring out of the concrete floor with brute force.
“Or we could do that,” Dennis muttered.
With her movement less restricted, Veronica fell forward on landed on Eliza. She couldn’t have stood up even if she had the strength, as both of her ankles were broken. “Eliza,” she groaned. “Talk to me. Please?!?”
Eliza heard the words, but they were so dim, as if being uttered from the other end of a long hallway. ‘She’s so strong,’ Eliza thought. Eliza would have smiled if she could. She had picked a winner when she decided to make things work with Veronica. She knew she could die having been in love at least once.
Kelik had appeared out nowhere and was looking down on the two lovers with obvious fear. Even in their last moments of life, the two looked good together. They looked like they belonged together. “Together,” he said, almost absently. But Valar heard him, and the two vampires’ eyes locked. Valar finally got the force shields down around the second cage.
[[ Thug, break those bars! ]]