The queen jumped to her feet. Ennis decided that Stiles was no longer the greatest threat in his world and turned toward the noise.
"Now would be an excellent time," prodded Stiles.
The queen shook her head in exasperation. "Swarming is not something one chooses. I know this is difficult for you to understand, spark, but not everything is a result of conscious thought. Swarming is instinct. I have to know, deep down in my soul on a supernatural level, that my hive is no longer safe. Then I would have to source a new hive, never to return to this one. Now is not that time."
The house rattled on its foundations as another might crash rent the air.
"Are you convinced of that?" wondered Stiles.
Something was literally tearing its way through the building.
"Where did you stash Liam?" Stiles raised his voice to carry over the din.
The queen was distracted by the commotion. "What?"
"I was simply suggesting you might want to get him. Have him with you and soon."
"Oh, yes, excellent plan. Aiden, would you get him?"
"Yes, my queen." The vampire looked reluctant to obey; no vampire wishes to leave the side of his queen when she is in danger. But a direct order was a direct order, so he bowed perfunctorily and scurried off.
Another crash sounded. The door burst open. A number of drones and several other hive vampires ran into the room. Braeden Tandy was the last inside, slamming the door behind her. Her gown was ripped and her hair had fallen down around her face.
"My queen! You would not believe the monster down there! It has fire and wooden blades. One of the arms seems to shoot stakes and I think another has bullets."
"Anything else?"
Braeden shook her head. "It hasn't used anything else yet."
"She'll have armed every single part with something deadly. That's how she thinks."
Stiles couldn't help but agree.
The wall on the opposite side of the room shook. They heard a horrible, wrenching, tearing, crashing noise. It was the sound of metal and wood and brick colliding. The entire wall before them was ripped apart. Once the dust settled, the top of the tank became visible. Stiles could just see the fleeing forms of the queen's party guests in the street below.
Stiles raised his bat and stood. He pointed it at the tank accusingly. "Lydia, I hope you haven't killed anyone."
But if Lydia was in there, guiding the tank, she did not acknowledge Stiles. She had one intended target and one target only—Queen Marin Morrell.
A giant arm wormed its way up into the room and hit at the vampire queen, trying to crush her. The queen, supernatural in speed, simply dodged out of the way of the massive metal thing. But she was truly trapped, for there were no other doors out of the room, and half of her house was now destroyed.
Ennis charged. Stiles had no idea what he intended to do or how he intended to do it, but he seemed bent on doing something. He leaped, impossibly fast and high, landing on top of the tank, where he began trying to scrabble for a way inside.
Stiles figured that was a pretty intelligent plan, but the vampire was thwarted in his attempts to pull off the top. He tried to punch his way through, but Lydia was a master worker in such matters. The head was practically seamless, with no possible way of getting in from the outside, not even for a vampire. She had given herself slits to see out of, but those slits were just big enough to peer through; they were not sufficiently large for a vampire to get his fingers inside and pry open the casing.
An arm whipped around and with a casual gesture brushed Ennis off as if he were a crumb. The vampire fell past the edge of the floor where the wall had once stood, grabbing wildly and missing, and disappeared out of sight. Only to reappear moments later, simply leaping up from one story to the next until he was back inside.
This time Ennis dove for the root of one of the arms, trying to tear it off the body. Relying on all his strength, he attempted to forcibly rip it away. Nothing. Lydia always thought in terms of supernatural strength and designed her devices accordingly.
While Ennis was occupied with a direct attack, several of the braver drones also charged at the tank. They were swept aside with little more than a perfunctory wave of one of the arms. Others made their way to their queen, standing in a protective huddle between her and the mechanical beast.
Another arm crept into the room, which now seemed to be filled with the writhing metal arms. This one raised up slowly, like a snake. Its tip opened with a snap and it shot a blast of fire at the group surrounding Morrell.
Drones screamed and the queen leapt to the side, carrying two of them with her. She would try to rescue any she could from the flames, much as Derek would do with his clavigers under similar circumstances.
Knowing it was probably futile, Stiles activated the magnetic disruptor in his bat, aiming it at the tank. As before, there was no reaction to the invisible blast. The arm swung around, spraying fire around the room. The bed caught fire and flamed up to the ceiling.
All was chaos in the room, with the smell of burning and the sound of screaming around him. Another arm slithered into the room. Stiles had a sinking feeling that this one might actually be a real threat. Lydia was done playing. Stiles knew what his bat was capable of where vampires were concerned and this particular arm dripped with an ominous liquid—a liquid that sizzled when it hit the carpet and burned a hole where it landed.
"Lydia, don't! You could hurt a lot more people than just the vampires!" Stiles was scared, not just for the hive, but also for the drones, who all seemed to be in the line of fire.
"Morrell, please, you must draw her away. People will die." Stiles turned his plea on the endangered vampire queen.
But the queen was beyond reason. All her efforts were now focused on protecting herself and her people from annihilation.
Aiden reappeared, carrying a small boy in his supernaturally strong arms. If possible, the vampire moved even faster than the queen had, coming to a stop before her and thrusting Liam's kicking form into her grasp. Everything stilled.
Liam was hollering and thrashing, but upon seeing the tank, he seemed more afraid of it than the vampires. He squealed and clutched reflexively at Morrell's neck with one arm.
The tank could not fire without risk of injury to the boy. No modern science had yet devised a weapon, apart from sunlight, that could harm a vampire without also harming a human. One of the arms, already falling with deadly force towards the vampire queen, veered away at the last minute, landing with a crash nearby.
Finally, a noise emanated from the tank. Lydia spoke.
"Give me my son and I will leave you in peace, Morrell."
"Mom!" yelled Liam to the tank. Realizing it was his mother and not some nightmarish monster, he began struggling in the vampire queen's arms. To absolutely no avail, of course; she was much, much stronger than he would ever be. The queen merely clutched the boy tighter.
Liam yelled again. "Stop, Mom. They haven't hurt me. They've been very kind. They feed me candy!" His pointy chin was set and his voice imperious.
Lydia said nothing more. It was clear they were at an impasse. The queen was not going to let go of the boy and Lydia was not going to let them go anywhere.
The house swayed on its foundation. Over half of it was now gone, with only the back section still intact, and there was very little holding that in place. The frame and supports were failing.
Stiles made his was slowly closer to the vampire queen, careful not to touch her. "I know you said practicality wouldn't come into it, but this would be an excellent time to swarm, if you could try."
Morrell turned her eyes on Stiles. She drew her lips back in a shriek of wrath, exposing all four of her fangs: Feeders and Makers, the second set being ones that only a queen had. Very little sense was left in the woman's face.
Stiles was not normally an indecisive individual, but in that second he wondered if he might not have chosen the wrong side in this battle. Even though Lydia was rampaging through the city, not caring who she hurt or killed, the queen was behaving like nothing more than a kidnapper. Stiles knew he had the capacity to end this. He could reach out and touch the vampire, turn her human and utterly vulnerable and unable to hold on to Liam. He hesitated and in that moment, as if to settle the matter, a metal arm came crashing toward them. It knocked Stiles back. He tripped, stumbled, and fell backwards, dropping his bat as he went.
In the time it took him to scrabble to his feet, Ennis and two other vampires leapt at the tank in one coordinated charge. They draped a large tarp over it. It momentarily blinded Lydia on the inside. She could neither steer nor attack. The arms flailed futilely.
With the tank temporarily disabled, the queen sprang into action. So did her drones. They all ran to the open side of the building, the queen moving at speed and clutching Liam tight to her chest. Without hesitation, she leaped over the edge and down to the rubble. Liam let out a holler of fear at the plunge, quickly followed by what could only be a whoop of exhilaration.
Stiles made his was downstairs as carefully as he could. He was both happy and annoyed to find the car with Heather and Isaac still parked out front.
"Why didn't you leave? I told you to keep Connor safe!"
"We had to make sure you got out okay." Isaac shrugged, as if that answer was enough. To him, Stiles thought, it probably was.
"Where to?"
Stiles looked at Heather, who had taken up in the back seat of the car with Connor at some point in the night – whether to defend him or just to make him more comfortable, Stiles wasn't sure. Stiles could only think of one place to go, with his husband out of commission and the moon still high and bright above them.
BUR, he was confident, would already be investigating the scene of the destruction or chasing the tank as it crashed through the city. BUR had an arsenal of weaponry as its disposal. Let them try to stop Lydia for awhile. They probably wouldn't be any more successful than he had been, given the machine, but they might slow her down. Stiles, after all, had only a bat. Then he swore, realizing that he didn't even have that anymore. It was lying in the rubble, probably buried under half a collapsed building. He still had his gun, but his precious bat was gone.
"I think, for now, we just need to go home. I need to speak with Laura."