Cross

Book 3 Chapter XI - "Crazy" Is, I Believe, The Medical Term

Chapter 29 - "Crazy" Is, I Believe, The Medical Term

After being badly injured and losing his left eye, Grievous finally managed to fight off his attacker. Swearing under his breath, he stumbled out of the catacombs and toward the entrance to their secret lair. He knew that Nightmare would confront Sinistrah and the human brat, and knowing her and her inability to keep something to herself for long, she'd tell them all their plans if Sinistrah even asked what she was planning on doing with them.

He reached the cave that led down to the lair without incident. He'd hardly entered it, however, when he was attacked by a horde of bats. Well, "attacked" wasn't quite the right word; they rushed past him and knocked him over, giving him a few nasty scratches in the process, but they continued on their way.

~~~~

"Damn you!" Nightmare shrieked, clutching her wrist. "Do you think that will stop me?"

"I destroyed the remote, so yes, I think it will stop you," Abihira said coolly.

David groaned silently. His sister obviously knew nothing of Nightmare (unsurprising, since to the best of his knowledge they'd never met before Abi started working for Terror). The encounters he'd had with her, however, especially their first meeting, taught him that Nightmare might be utterly insane, but she wasn't stupid. She wouldn't have made only one remote control to command her army. She made a habit of hiding weapons - sometimes literally - up her sleeve, so she might have a dozen remotes nearby.

Nightmare removed the ruby necklace she'd been wearing and held it out toward her macabre army. They immediately came to life and started moving toward David and Dani.

"Now what will you do?" Nightmare taunted.

Abi jumped down and landed next to David. "Can they be killed?"

"She says they can't."

"Then we will have to find a way of killing them that she overlooked."

David wasn't exactly reassured. Nightmare and Grievous - and possibly a few other people - had been working together on this. Nightmare seemed to have been in command, but Grievous had probably helped her and pointed out things she might have overlooked.

"First, let's get out of their reach."

He grabbed Dani's hand and jumped onto the life-support machine overhead, pulling her up with him. Abi followed.

"Where's Nightmare?" the assassin said, looking around. Sure enough, Nightmare was nowhere to be seen. "Oh, never mind. We've got to think of some way to kill these things."

It was Dani who came up with the best idea. "They're sort of like robots, aren't they?"

"Yes, Nightmare already told us that," David said, rather sharply.

"So they can be deactivated, can't they?"

It was so obvious. So simple. So maddening that a human, and a human child at that, should be able to reach a conclusion that two adult vampires couldn't.

"Nightmare said she implanted the electric circuits in their heads. It looks like we'll just have to destroy their heads," David said.

"We have a problem," Abi said suddenly. She was apparently reloading her gun while keeping a wary eye on the zombies, who were now standing beneath them and reaching up, trying to grab them. "This gun only holds two cartridges of five bullets each. I used one bullet shooting Nightmare, so I have only nine left. Even if every shot was a direct hit, which is most unlikely when we don't know where in their heads the circuits are located, that would only kill nine of them."