Nosphorus: Part II - Act 2
Niki slid the key into the lock and turned it. The door stuck a little, as usual, but with some Slayer shoulder it opened. Logan followed her in and Addison after.
“I take it I’ll be living here again?” the Watcher asked, inspecting the small apartment as if expecting it to have gone to hell in his absence.
“Yeah, sure,” Niki shrugged. Logan scowled, still despising the Watcher who had done no good in the first place and then left without a word. Addison immediately turned and beckoned the vampire who waited outside.
“Come in, it’s all right.”
Logan and Niki turned as one to see Pearce stroll across the threshold with a grin on his face. “Finally!” Niki sighed defeated and Logan looked about ready to throttle the Watcher. Niki held him back.
“Now,” Addison said, clapping his hands together. “We’ve got a problem–” he glanced at Logan who sat down at the kitchen table, “several problems, actually. And they need to be resolved before we go into battle with this... thing.”
Pearce sat down at the table across from the scowling human in the blazer, offering a friendly grin but receiving in response only a cold stare.
“You,” Addison’s pointing finger fell to the vampire, “can only fight provided you do not inspire fear. Correct?”
Pearce sighed and nodded. The vampire shot a glance to Logan who was barely suppressing a smirk.
“You,” the pointing finger found Logan, “can’t fight period.”
Logan, not wanting to let his amusement fade, merely shrugged. “I know. I’m only human.”
“And you,” Addison pointed to Niki who tried to avoid the finger but found herself cornered.
“Hey, I’m the only one here who can hold her own!” She twisted out of the Watcher’s incriminating point and plunked down into a chair at the kitchen table. Addison was the only one left standing, glaring down at the other three like a scolding parent.
“You have the strength of ten men...” he agreed, “ten drunk, blind, helpless old men.”
Pearce smirked, only to have Logan kick him in the shin under the table. “What are you laughing at, circus freak?” Logan demanded.
Pearce cocked his head. “Circus freak...” he scratched his head and set his jaw. “You think that’s really funny, don’t you?”
Logan’s sarcastic smile broke into a chuckle. “Yeah, I kinda do.”
Pearce sighed. “Good.” And the vampire decked him, making him fall backwards from his seat.
Logan leapt to his feet, his fists balled. His face was red with anger and he was breathing heavily. Niki gripped his arm, preventing him from destroying the helpless vamp. This did not, however, prevent his acetic words. “One day, you little shithead, you’re going to get a stake right up your–”
“Enough!” Addison slammed his fist down on the table. Logan was jerked from his anger. “This is your biggest problem!” the Watcher shouted. There was a stunned silence, ended abruptly when Addison grabbed the edge of the small table and overturned it, leaving Niki and Pearce sitting in their chairs facing each other and Logan standing above his own overturned chair, looking very confused.
“If you can’t get along when you’re alone with each other, how do you expect to defeat something like the Nosphorus?”
“What do you suggest we do?” Logan said setting his chair upright and straddling it.
“I’ll tell you exactly what we’re going to do,” the Watcher said confidently. “Pearce has a plan, and we’re going to listen to him, follow his lead.”
Logan’s eyes widened. “What?” He jumped back to his feet, aiming his own accusatory finger at the Watcher. “How can you put our lives... everyone’s lives in his hands?” The man searched for the vocalization to express his feeling. “He’s... he’s nothing!”
Niki squeezed his hand and looked up to him with her calm eyes. “Sit down. If Pearce has a plan, then he’s a step ahead of us, isn’t he?” Logan grudgingly sat, all eyes turning to the vampire who now looked very uncomfortable.
“The plan...” he said, covering his nervousness. “R... right. The plan,” his eyes darted between Addison and Niki who looked to him expectantly. Logan looked at him with nothing short of contempt. “Well...” he began, “I do have the beginnings of a plan,” he admitted, folding his hands in his lap.
Niki shrugged. “Let’s hear it.”
Logan was in the lead. He didn’t have particular confidence in the plan, but the one thing he did have almost total confidence in the was the twelve gauge he carried. Niki followed him with an axe and several stakes tucked away on her person. Each had a black bandana covering their mouth and nose. Pearce followed several paced behind Niki, pressed against the alley wall, his hands free of weapon, but clutching a thermos sized container.
“I won’t need any weapons,” Pearce explained earlier in the apartment. “I’ve got what I need right here,” he massaged a fist and cracked his knuckles. Logan rolled his eyes.
Logan came to the end of the alley which was a door into the warehouse. One shot took out the lock and he gave the door a kick, opening it inwards. The three entered, Niki and Logan immediately switching on their flashlights. Pearce separated from them, hugging the inside wall and remaining in the dark.
“It’s important that I not be revealed until just the right time,” the vampire explained. “Mr. Addison, who, I have to admit, is of no use in combat, will be waiting with the van in case we fail and need to retreat.”
Logan was the first to spot activity, quickly bringing his shotgun to bear. He cocked it loudly, clearing his throat as he did. Fifty pale faces, white eyes highlighted in the glare of the flashlight, turned towards him, all of them surrounding a crouched figure in a black suit. From across the warehouse, the light of the flashlights highlighted the red of the central figure’s hair. Logan nodded. “That’s him.”
Niki grinned fiercely. “I’ll get the guy in the middle – you take the bunch around him.”
Logan scoffed. “Oh, you’re so kind.” The warehouse echoed with the sound of his first shot. One of the infected fell with blood pouring from his ruined face. Logan cocked the gun and fired again. He didn’t have fifty rounds, but the nice thing about a shotgun as compared to a handgun...
“And when you run out of rounds, you’ve got a handy club.” Logan rolled his eyes as Pearce outlined the battle. “Naturally it will be a trap. The one in the center will be a diversion. The real Nosphorus will be somewhere else entirely, watching, waiting until you’ve let your guard down. Then he’ll strike.”
Niki slashed her way to the center of the crowd of infected people. She drove her axe into the chest of the business woman she had failed to save in the café and watched her collapse to the floor. The little boy in the raincoat leapt into the air and set upon her with a sudden expression of animal blood-lust. His teeth bared and he tried to take a bite of her, but buckshot caught him in the side of the head and sent him to the ground.
“When you get to the center of the ambush and the decoy has your full attention, the Nosphorus will strike. Luckily, that’s when I strike too.”
As the red haired figure landed a fist to the back of Logan’s head, sending him to the floor, dazed, Pearce leapt from the shadows cast by the jostling flashlights. The Nosphorus made his way up behind Niki who was raising her axe above the crouching figure in the center of the infected.
“Surprise!” Pearce grinned as he threw the canister against the cement floor with a loud bang. Something shot away from it in the darkness and the cannister itself began sliding crazily around the floor, trailing a growing cloud of mist.
Logan groggily got to his feet, immediately swinging his shotgun into the face of the nearest infected. The city worker went down and when he got up, his face twitched. As Logan swung again and missed, the man’s face contorted momentarily before he regained enough composure to swing back, sending Logan to the floor.
By the time Logan got back to his feet, he could hear twittering all around the warehouse. An infected man went sailing past Logan and hit the floor, gasping for breath, tears flowing down his face. He was laughing hysterically.
Logan pressed his hand to his bandana, preventing the gas from entering his own system. “Where did you get that?” he demanded as Pearce swung a viciously accurate punch into the face of an infected man who was nearly doubled over in laughter.
“Nitrous oxide?” Pearce grinned. “I know a guy who knows a guy–”
“Who’s a dentist?” Logan asked, cocking his gun and ending the laughter for an elderly woman.
“Pretty much,” the vampire shrugged, kicking the cannister deeper into the crowd of infected.
Niki aborted the downward swing of her axe and turned it into a broad sweeping arc, driving the blade into the waist of the surprised Nosphorus behind her. His face –classic vampire– twitched for a moment, then crinkled in amusement. He drew the blade from his side and with a chuckle amid the rising gas, pulled the weapon from the Slayer’s hands.
Logan backed away from the rising cloud as the hysterically laughing infected began to fall on top of each other unconscious. He himself chuckled, waving a hand before his face to clear some of the fumes. He was feeling a bit lightheaded. As the mist finally began to clear, the only figures left in the center were the masked Slayer and the chuckling Nosphorus. Logan raised his shotgun but found his aim was wavering. The two were locked in suck close combat, he daren’t fire. Pearce joined him, smiling broadly.
“Wasn’t that funny?” the vampire asked, but Logan was gazing intently at the battle in the center of the dispersing cloud. “Heh,” Pearce chuckled. “Look’t her go.” As Logan watched, rapt, Pearce quietly backed away, slipping out of the building into the night.
Niki tore herself from the Nosphorus’ grip and made a swing with the stake. She missed, sending the Irishman into throes of laughter. He caught her wrist as she swung again and twisted it hard, making her cry out in pain. Her foe brought his knee into her stomach and bashed his elbow into the back of her neck. His knee then drove into her face and sent her sprawling backwards. Her foot caught the flashlight illuminating the battle and sent it spinning away into the darkness. Now Niki was blind to the attacker.
The Slayer gripped her stake tightly, her heart pounding. She needed some Stuff. She was getting tired. That wasn’t supposed to happen— it never happened when she was buzzed. Then the fist caught her jaw and the foot took her ankle, sending her twisting to the ground. As the boot came down on her chest, the warehouse was momentarily illuminated with the flash and bang of the shotgun. Then the boot was gone.
Niki sprang to her feet and looked down as her eyes began to adjust to the darkness at the figure on the ground. The Nosphorus was giggling madly, clutching his ear as blood gushed from between his fingers.
Niki scowled and drove her heel into his throat, twisting viciously. The gurgling sound was much like a laugh, but it didn’t last long as the Slayer bent down and drove the stake deep into the thing’s chest. It hissed as a normal vampire would and dissolved beneath her crushing boot to dust on the floor.
Niki jumped as Logan’s hand slid around her waist.
“And then it’s all lovey dovey, kissy smoochy and everyone lives happily ever after.” Pearce sighed, satisfied and cracked his knuckles with a smug little grin. “What do you think?”
Niki and Addison nodded in unison. “That’s what we’ll do.” As one they stood from the kitchen table.
Logan rolled his eyes. “Alright, fine. Where do you keep the shotgun?” He took the weapon from the closet that Niki indicated and shouldered it with gusto. “The upside to this is that I can take as many shots at ol’ Prince here as I like and still not ruin our battle plan.”
Pearce nodded grudgingly. “One day, you’ll be smiling and my face will the last thing you see.”
Logan cocked his gun. "That's what they all say."
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