Chapter 136: The Vampire Turned Human Swine
A wind carrying the smell of blood moved through the Nursery.
The vampire leader looked at the director who had proven herself entirely unwilling to yield, and let a cold smile form. He leaned in close, kept his voice where only she could hear.
"Honestly, Miss, I quite like your attitude."
"But I think you may have misread the situation."
Something cruel crept into his expression. "You see, if you refuse to cooperate, I have no intention of giving you a quick death. What I'll do is take my time. I'll be thorough about it. Eventually they won't be able to stand listening to you, and they'll open the door themselves."
He turned and looked directly at the surveillance camera mounted on the wall, spread his hands toward the lens, raised his voice.
"Hey. I know you can see this."
"If you don't want anything to happen to her, open the doors."
"My problem is with whoever runs this place. Not with any of you."
"Once the door is open, we can sit down and talk. There's no need for this to get worse than it already has."
His face was composed and reasonable. Inside, he was already working through which of them to start with once the door came open.
He was deep in this pleasant consideration when the director raised her voice next to him.
"Don't believe a word of it! These people have no intention of honoring any agreement! They will kill every single one of you!"
His fist tightened until his knuckles cracked.
He kept his voice low, pressed close to her ear, and produced his final warning in a voice that left no room for interpretation. "Last time I'm saying this. Stop talking. You'll live longer."
She turned to face the cameras the moment he finished.
"Did everyone hear that? He told me to stop talking. Said I'd live longer if I did."
"Which means he planned to kill all of us from the start. Do not open those doors."
She turned back and held the leader's gaze with the specific look of a person who has made their calculation and is at peace with it.
It said, simply: do it then.
The last of his patience ran out.
"Fine. Since you want this so badly."
He drew the revolver from his hip, aimed it directly at her head, and pulled the trigger without a pause.
BANG.
The bullet left the barrel.
Then it curved. A curve that had no business existing physically, bending in a sharp arc and driving itself directly into the leader's own temple.
Vampire constitution being what it was, a standard bullet passing through his skull did not kill him. It damaged brain tissue sufficiently to reduce him, for a brief interval, to something that could only drool and stare.
Then his regeneration brought him back.
"What the fuck!?"
He stared at the revolver in his hand with the expression of a man who has just watched something happen that he cannot explain.
Had he somehow ended up with a trick gun? Because that was the only scenario in which a bullet fired at someone else ended up in the shooter's own head.
While he was still processing this, the subordinates around him had all lifted their faces at once, sensing something above them.
As though something was in the sky.
Then:
A dull, wet impact.
The first subordinate went the way of a plastic bag filled with water that someone drops hard from a height. Blood and matter exploded outward in a complete circle, coating the wall beside him and leaving a human-shaped imprint on the surface.
The second went next.
His head caved inward first, as though something was pressing down from above, his body folding in half in an instant before it too burst apart.
Third. Fourth. Fifth.
One by one, in quick dull succession.
No screaming. No struggling. No time for healing to engage.
"Burst" wasn't quite the right word for what was happening, technically speaking.
It was less an explosion from the inside and more a compression from the outside: some external force driving the pressure within each body to a point it couldn't sustain, at which point the structural integrity simply failed all at once.
Fear moved through the vampire leader as he finally looked up.
He didn't want to die without understanding what was killing him.
What he saw was a figure descending from roughly ten meters up, in the unhurried posture of something that had no concern for how gravity was supposed to work.
Not a heat-vision Superman. Something considerably stranger.
Anyone who looked at this figure had their body obliterated by an invisible force the moment their gaze landed. They went like balloons filled with water dropped from a great height, each one hitting the ground in pieces.
Three seconds. Dozens of vampires known for healing that made them nearly impossible to kill didn't get the opportunity to test that healing at all.
The leader's gun slipped out of his hand and landed in the blood pooling around his feet.
He ran.
One thought in his head: Find Frost. Ask him what the hell this actually is.
This was nothing like what Frost described.
He said it was just a security company.
Why is there something here that makes Ghost Rider look like a minor inconvenience?
A vampire's natural speed is exceptional. In a blink he had covered a hundred meters.
He could see the tree line ahead of him, the overgrown forest that offered cover and distance and a chance.
A death-defying grin spread across his face.
Fate was on his side after all.
He'd walked away from Daywalker more than once. A lucky person didn't die in a field outside a children's welfare center. Lucky people didn't die ordinarily.
He was almost there.
"Just reach the trees. Just reach the trees."
"Once I'm in the forest, that thing can't follow."
"Freak. I still win in the end."
"This is the triumph of the art of escape."
The grin stretched wider.
A force like a mountain collapsing landed across him without warning.
An invisible cleaver moved through the air with no apparent effort, and all four of his limbs were simply gone.
The smile froze where it was.
He hit the ground the way a rag doll goes when you tear its arms and legs off and drop it.
Even limbless, he threw himself forward, a fish slapped onto dry land, the severed ends already moving as the flesh began its work, the regeneration trying desperately to produce something that could propel him even another inch.
At a vampire's rate of healing, this kind of wound would normally be repaired in ten or twenty seconds.
Those ten or twenty seconds felt, to him, like something without an end.
Footsteps behind him. Getting closer.
He pushed his face against the ground and tried to gain distance that way, any distance at all.
A single, small gesture from Matthew's hand.
A force rolled across the field like a wave and swept him back.
Matthew looked down at the vampire leader in the dirt, pale through to nothing, and spoke without particular emphasis.
"I ask. You answer."
"One question. Asked once."
"If you lie, you end up like them."
"Are we clear?"
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