The Eccentrics (Knight Watch Book 3) by Tim Akers

Author:Tim Akers [Akers, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baen Books
Published: 2024-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

I stood there, surrounded by dead vampires, trying to come up with an excuse that didn’t make me sound like an idiot, a traitor, or both. Moments passed. Tesla stared at me with the look of a man on the edge of technologically advanced violence.

“Well?” he asked finally.

“They were dead when I got here,” I answered.

“Dead when you got here? Is that all you have to say? That they were dead when you got here?” He marched down the stairs, avoiding the same pools of blood that I had, gesturing to the surrounding bodies. “A room full of dead steampunks. My God, these people had families. And you just let the vampires—”

“These are the vampires, actually. Dead vampires.” I pointed to the girl at my feet. “See? Fangs, pointy ears, general lack of skin tone. Vampires.”

“What? What the . . . what?” Tesla stopped dead in his tracks. “But we killed all of the vampires!”

“Yeah. About that.” I glanced at Chesa. The rest of Knight Watch gathered behind her, all pointedly looking anywhere but in my direction. “Esther spared a couple. I’d say about”—I did a quick count of the bodies—“six of them. No, eight. Jakub and his brother escaped.”

“There are a couple more in the fireplace,” Chesa pointed out.

“Right, so, ten. Let’s call it an even dozen, just to be safe,” I said. Tesla gaped at me. The rest of the Eccentrics weren’t that far behind. They spread out through the coven, examining bodies and furnishings, poking their heads through the smashed doors that lined the wall. I pressed on. “Though honestly we don’t know how many they’ve created since then. I’d rather not speculate on—”

“Esther MacRae, on her own, just decided to betray our confidence and rescued a coven of bloodsuckers, then hid them? Inside the Gestalt?” Tesla was yelling by now, his face red and bulging with veins. “And then when we uncovered this fact, you came under the pretense of helping us, and somehow stumbled on that very cabal?”

“I had a key.” I held up the display box Esther had given me. “Though clearly I didn’t need it.”

“We’re done,” Tesla snapped. “I’m dropping you off at the nearest faire. You can find your own way back to Mundane Actual. I don’t care how you do it—ride a unicorn, hitchhike through the Middle Ages, join a group of wandering sketch artists. And when you get home, you tell Esther MacRae that the next time she contacts me, I’m going to drop a bomb on her jumped-up Medieval Times franchise so big—”

“Boss,” Adelaide said sternly. I noticed that her arm was in a sling. Tesla whirled to face her, his mouth still working its way around the dimensions of this theoretical bomb. “Maybe take a look at this.”

Adelaide gazed up at the tapestry. With all the blood and carnage in the room, plus the presence of a vampire, I hadn’t given the artwork much of a look. The outside edges of the tapestry depicted your typical medieval scenes, tinged with gothic horror.

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