First act as queen, that disgusting display of decadence was never happening again…if they let me.
I could see they were going to recover, so I had that for me. As we headed for the deepest parts of the mountain, the very ground shook again. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like that the whole mountain was moving.
What kind of explosives did they have?
Felicia barked commands into her Bluetooth, and we all started running.
Two explosions?
Or was this a mistaken analysis of an earthquake?
We were in the area of the world the humans called The Ring of Fire, and we were subject to both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Was this stronghold about to be consumed by a volcano? We would have to evacuate immediately—everyone would get out, but our lives would be left encased in granite.
I stopped dead, and the half-sober overlords behind us crashed into Nial.
I pointed at Melchior. “Get everyone out of the mountain. Treat this like an eruption. Out. I’d rather let them back in after everything is fine than lose a single life. Go.”
Melchior took off at vampire speed through the hall to implement the evacuation plans I knew existed. Felicia, Nial and I started down the hallway, this time at near vampire speed to where she had said the source of the problem had been.
The chamber, where only hours before thousands of vampires had been housed while I was crowned, lay in shambles. ‘Shambles’ was kind, I corrected myself. It was gone. The mountain had been brought down, crushing nearly three-quarters of what had been open area before, and there was a hint of cold, thin air in the room.
“A breach,” Nial said.
A bullet whizzed by us, embedding in the rock nearby—and exploded.
Everyone ducked into a crouch.
The overlords completely sobered at that moment. Someone had breached our stronghold and was now going to start firing at us, with blast rounds. And those rounds meant that whoever was trying to get in knew exactly what we were.
And how to kill us.
Another bullet and explosion.
“We have to find out where that is coming from. This isn’t a volcano.” Lord Pippin, who had been the least drunk and was the most sober, now crawled up to me. He looked at Felicia and Nial. “I don’t know if it’s smart to evacuate or not, but we’ll let it go for now.”
“They can get away much easier this way if we’re being attacked,” Nial offered.
“Who is properly outfitted for a firefight?” I looked at the others around me and watched as only Felicia and Nial raised their hands. “You lazy ass overlords. No more blood parties.”
I pulled out two of the four guns I had on me, handed one to Lord Pippin and one to Lord Otto.
Felicia pulled out one for Lord Xenon, and Nial lent two of his five to Lord Cato and Lord Belshazzar.
Nial rumbled, “Remember that you only have those rounds and one spare clip. Don’t go walking around like you’re a fucking terminator, shooting willy-nilly.”
“What’s a terminator?” Lord Otto asked.
Nial rolled his eyes. “Oh, for—”
“Never mind!” I snapped the words off. “Just don’t fire at everything, since it seems you’ve forgotten to take care of your military training. Spears and cannons aren’t used anymore.” I glanced at Felicia. “Schedule them all for range time.”
She grinned. “Yes, your highness.”
“Nial, go right and stay low. Look for the breach. That’s where they were shooting from.”
“I suggest we assume that they’re as conservative with ammo as we are,” he said. He pointed to Lord Otto, Lord Xenon, and Lord Belshazzar to follow him. Hunkered down, they walked behind the rocks that had fallen out of what we were all assuming was the line of sight for the shooter—or shooters.
“What are we doing?” Lord Pippin asked, hefting the gun. “This is nice. I’m out of practice.”
Felicia grumbled, “We’re looking for the same thing they are—the person who shot at us and who blew up the side of a mountain.”
Cato looked at me. “You realize this was probably mistimed? That this was supposed to go off hours ago and crush the dais.”
“You think?” I leveled my gaze at him. “That would have taken out the five of you, me, and anyone close by, and left this place in tatters.”
“And the whole damn vampire population with no guidance.” Lord Pippin tapped his nose.
“So we are attacked—”
Another explosion went off, and a hail of explosive rounds followed it in the direction of the others. I moved, running out of the way of the bits of falling debris and following the bullets back toward the origin. Cato, Felicia, and Lord Pippin were right behind me, and we were able to scramble out of what I thought was their field of vision.
More bullets and we moved again.
Closer to where we could see a touch of daylight streaming in.
A body moved ahead of us in the breach.
I took aim and fired.
By the spray and smell of blood from the exploding round, I guessed I must’ve hit whoever was in there.
That was confirmed a moment later. “Bitch!”
I grinned in feral delight.
“So this was an attack,” Felicia said.
Cato snorted in agreement of the obvious.
There was a small hail of bullets aimed at where we were, and they ricocheted off the rocks they were hitting, exploding when they finally found a target. Carefully, slowly, I crawled up the broken walls of the chamber, staying low and remaining out of view.
“You know, as queen, you really should have evacuated with everyone else,” Lord Pippin stated not so helpfully, crawling right along with me.
“As overlord, you should have too. But here we are, trying to sneak toward the gunfire and hoping we don’t get shot by exploding rounds.”
The gunshots were sounding much closer, and I suspected we were close to the source.
Nial’s voice cracked through the air. “Run! Get out of here!”
I didn’t realize he was screaming at us.
I didn’t move.
Almost the last thought I ever made was, damn, his voice could really carry.
Lord Belshazzar’s speeding vampire form darted across our field of vision as he grabbed something out of the air just above us. He hurled it back toward the direction it had come from, and the stick of dynamite lodged into the far rocks…seconds left on the fuse.
Who the hell used dynamite with fuses anymore?
There wasn’t time for much more thought beyond that as Lord Belshazzar grabbed me, triggering Lord Pippin, Cato, and Felicia to kick into high speed and get away from the crack in the rock where the dynamite had lodged.
Speeding away from the disaster, I watched as it unfolded in almost slow motion, the entire group reforming from various locations to escape.
The flash of detonation changed into the fire of rapid expansion. The compression wave it created pushed the rock away from other rocks, cracking them under sudden impact. It blossomed outward like a red flower of death hurling the rocks in its way, with forces hard and strong enough to rip a man’s head from his neck.