I smiled and turned my attention back to the road, but Natalie stayed awake with me as we continued up 287. The rest of the girls were still asleep, so we just kept going all the way up to 78. Then once we were on 78, I decided that we might as well keep going for a while.
I was tired, but I could make it a little longer before I needed a break, and I figured that as long as everyone but Nat was asleep, we should go ahead and get out of New Jersey. We hadn’t run into any trouble on the interstate so far, other than a few minor obstacles on the highway, but based on the bonfires on every side of the interstate, it looked like we sure as shit weren’t alone out here.
And I preferred not to run into any Jersey vamps if we didn’t have to.
When the sign for the border of Pennsylvania finally came into view, I had never been so happy to cross into another state before. It wasn’t like the scenery changed at all, but even though the highway was exactly the same as it had been, everything felt a little bit lighter and more open.
Maybe we’d actually make it all the way to West Virginia without any more real problems.
I knew we still had hours to go before we reached the town where Catherine’s uncle lived, but so far, things had gone much more smoothly ever since we got the fuck out of Brooklyn. It was possible that New York City had experienced the worst of the vampocalypse, so maybe the rest of the country wasn’t quite that bad.
I wouldn’t have bet any money on it, much less bet my life on it, but I still felt just a little bit of hope that maybe things would be better now that we were outside of one of the biggest cities in the whole goddamn world.
At some point after signs for Allentown started to appear on the side of the road, I heard Catherine yawn and stretch in the back seat, but almost as soon as she blinked herself awake, her dark-brown eyes went wide.
“Uh… Sam?” the auburn-haired girl whispered.
“Yeah?” I asked as I glanced back at her.
“Are we, uh, stopping any time soon?” Catherine hissed. “Because I didn’t mean to sleep that long, and now if I don’t find a bathroom soon, my bladder is gonna be… fuck, I’ve really gotta pee.”
“Shit,” I said as I glanced at the signs on the side of the highway to try to find a good place to stop. “Yeah, we can stop somewhere, just try to hang on a minute.”
“What about the airport?” Natalie asked with a nod at another sign beside the interstate.
“The municipal airport?” I glanced at the sign. “Yeah, that might work. It sounds small, so we can try that.”
As soon as I took the next exit to get to the small airport, I saw that there were plenty of other places we could stop instead, and they might all be a little more secure than an airport with huge empty runways that a whole mob of vamps could overrun in just a matter of minutes.
“Wake up everybody else, would you?” I asked Catherine. “Since we’re about to stop, I want you all to get out and move around.”
“Hey, everybody, wake up!” Catherine said and then clapped her hands.
“Damn!” Erika pushed herself up and glared at Catherine from behind her glasses. “That was a little rude, don’t you think?”
“Don’t care, gotta pee!” Catherine said as she bounced up and down on her duffle bag seat.
“What’s going on?” Brianna asked as she straightened up in the back.
Neko’s head slipped from the blonde’s shoulder down to her chest before she woke up and glanced around at everyone else, and then the petite Japanese girl reached over and shook Lily awake.
“I’m gonna pull into a car dealership,” I told them. “It’s closer to the interstate than the airport, and there should be plenty of doors that we can barricade if we end up taking a longer break here.”
I slowed down as I approached the car dealership, and again, I had to resist the urge to turn on my blinker since there were only empty cars all around us, so there was no one to actually signal to. When I turned into the dealership, my headlights reflected off a whole row of brand new cars that had never been touched, and since the power seemed to be out in Allentown, too, my headlights were the only source of light on the whole street.
“Get your guns,” I said. “You don’t have to take one of every kind, but at least grab a pistol and a rifle just in case we need them.”
After I parked the truck right in front of the dealership, Catherine immediately pushed over the other girls toward the back of Rhino to let herself out. As soon as the rest of the girls grabbed their pistols and rifles, they tumbled out the back of the truck to follow Catherine.
Natalie and I armed ourselves each with a shotgun and a handgun, and I grabbed my Louisville slugger just for good measure. Then my girlfriend and I hopped down from the front of the truck and closed the doors as quietly as we could.
When I came around the corner of Rhino, I saw that Catherine was already making a beeline for the front door.
“Hey, wait a minute!” I hissed.
The tall auburn-haired beauty stopped in her tracks, but she just bounced up and down impatiently.
“I’ve gotta go inside and check things out first,” I whispered. “I need to make sure that no other vamps are here.”
“Okay, but please hurry!” Catherine said. “I’m dying here.”
“Just stay right behind me,” I told the rest of the girls.
I led the way through the unlocked front door, and all six girls followed right behind me into the main lobby of the car dealership. The glass door thudded closed quietly behind us, but even though everything was completely silent inside the dealership, something felt off. Everything smelled so metallic that at first, I couldn’t smell anything except for the display cars on the main lobby floor, so I took a few steps forward to try to get a better sense of things.
The next time I inhaled, I smelled fresh blood.
Chapter 3
“Fuck,” I growled.
Before I could even tell the girls to run back out to the truck, I heard footsteps from down the hallway to our right. I opened my mouth to tell the girls to get out, but just then, two vamps emerged from the hallway, and each of their mouths were stained with blood like badly smudged lipstick.
“I thought I smelled fresh meat,” the wiry vamp on the left said as he grinned up at his taller companion.
“Nat, get the girls back into the truck,” I hissed. “Now!”
The two bloodsuckers sprang toward us so fast that I didn’t even have time to aim my gun at them. Instead, I just dropped into a crouch and jumped up to meet them mid-air. I crashed into the wiry motherfucker and brought him to the ground, but I immediately rolled away from him to make sure that the tall asshole didn’t get to the girls.
There was a sound of shattered glass behind me, so I whipped around to see that the tall vamp had almost reached the girls. I didn’t see Neko, but Lily, Erika, and Catherine were all already outside, and Natalie had just made it to the exit herself with her hand in Brianna’s. My girlfriend jerked the curvy blonde forward, just as the tall asshole lunged for them.
I threw myself toward him to take him out by the legs, but just as I grabbed the tall vamp’s ankles and yanked him down to the floor, someone slammed down an emergency fireman’s axe onto the back of the tall asshole’s calves.
As the vamp shrieked in pain, I looked up to see Neko where she stood above him with the fireman’s axe in hand.
I could see that the rest of the girls had all fled back toward Rhino, but for some reason, the pink-haired Japanese girl had stayed behind, and she had even managed to break into the emergency box to get an axe loose.
There was no time for either of us to say anything, because just as soon as I met her gaze, the wiry vamp ran toward me, and the tall motherfucker’s calves healed over enough for him to jump back to his feet.
“I’ll take Long Legs!” Neko shouted.
The wiry vamp was right on top of me, so I didn’t argue. Instead, I kept myself low to the ground and spun around to deliver a kick to the l
ean asshole’s shins. At the same time, I watched the Japanese girl out from the corner of my eye as she dodged and twisted around to avoid every blow from the tall vamp.
I didn’t know what was sexier, the fact that Neko was a world-class fucking judo champion or the fact that she had stayed behind to help me in the first place.
The wiry motherfucker had dropped to his knees when I kicked him, but he immediately jumped back up again, so I rolled to my feet and gripped my Louisville slugger with both hands. As I swung it toward his stomach, the vamp hopped back out of the way and then grasped the end of the bat to try to pull it back toward himself.
I let him tug back and forth on the bat with me just long enough to throw him off guard, and then when the end of the slugger was pointed firmly at his stomach, I suddenly released my grip on it. As soon as I let go, the bat instantly slammed into his abdomen, and the wiry bloodsucker gasped and staggered backward.
“That’s better,” I muttered as I lunged forward to rip my slugger back out of his hands.
I paused for just a second to look over and make sure that Neko was still okay, but she had just nicked the tall vamp with the fire axe again, so she seemed to be doing just fine for herself. When the pink-haired girl dropped down to roll between his long legs and pop up behind him, I decided she could probably evade him for a few more seconds, so I decided to focus on my guy.
He had straightened up again, so he had clearly recovered from whatever damage I’d dealt to his internal organs. He glanced over my shoulder at Neko, snarled at the fact that I stood between him and his prey, and then turned and ran back down the hallway where he had come from.
“Oh, I really hope he’s not going to get any friends,” I groaned, but I immediately threw myself into the fight with Neko against Long Legs.
Even if the wiry motherfucker was going to get more vamps, we could still get out of here if we just took down the tall bloodsucker fast enough. Besides, Neko might be a goddamn judo champion, but I couldn’t just leave her here alone to follow the lean bastard deeper into the car dealership.
The petite Japanese girl had managed to dive around to his back again, so before he could turn around and face her, I leaped toward him with my bat raised. I swung it at his skull, but even though he jumped back in time to avoid my slugger, the movement put him right in the center of a swing from Neko’s axe.
The axe blade collided into his spine with a satisfying crack, but when Neko tried to pull it back out, it looked like the blade had gone into him deep enough that now it was stuck inside his muscles. The pink-haired girl immediately dropped the handle and stepped away, so before the tall vamp could reach back and wrench the axe out himself, I swung my slugger straight up at his groin.
When he dropped to his knees, it put him at just the right height for me to line my bat up like I was about to play a life-or-death game of tee-ball. I squared my feet off, pulled the slugger back, and then unleashed the full fury of the metal bat onto the bloodsucker’s temple.
The tall vamp’s head spun around so hard that I heard the vertebrae in his neck snap, and just as I pulled the bat back to hit him again, I spotted the wiry motherfucker beside one of the SUVs in the lobby. There was fresh blood on his mouth, so I realized he must have gone back to have another little snack to gain some extra strength, and now he thought he could sneak up on Neko from behind while I was distracted with his friend.
“Behind you!” I shouted to the pink-haired Japanese girl.
Neko dropped to her stomach and rolled away, so the wiry vamp had to retreat and try to come at her from the other side of the SUV. While she avoided him, I looked back at Long Legs in front of me so I could finish him off before his spine healed itself back up again.
This time when the Louisville slugger collided with his skull, it forced his head all the way over to the side, so the third time that I slammed my bat into him, it tore his head off his neck. His head just flopped over to the side as moldy vamp blood poured out of it, so I brought my bat up and crashed it down onto the stub of his neck one more time to completely separate his skull from his body.
“Now that’s a home fucking run,” I growled, and then I kicked his body down onto the floor.
I looked back up to check on Neko and the wiry bloodsucker, but at first, I only saw the vamp beside the SUV. The moment he ducked down to look underneath the vehicle, the petite Japanese girl rolled out from underneath it to pop up on the other side.
The vamp snarled and dashed around the SUV to get to her, but Neko just dropped back down and rolled underneath the vehicle again. It was a good way to keep him busy while she waited for me to back her up, since even though he was a lean asshole, he still wasn’t nearly as small as Neko, so he would have had a harder time getting in and out from under the SUV.
But the next time he darted around the vehicle to try to get to her, he found me instead.
I smiled and rammed the end of my slugger right into the center of his nose. Blood spurted out all over the metal of my bat and the side of the SUV, but the flow of blood stopped almost as soon as it started, so I knew he was even stronger than he first seemed.
As I pulled the bat back toward myself, the wiry bloodsucker took advantage of the half second that the movement made me vulnerable, and he punched me three times in a row right underneath my rib cage. His fists were faster than I realized, and by the time I moved away from him, my abdomen was pretty fucking sore.
I swung my bat at him again, but he blocked the blow with his forearms, and even though the metal crunched against his bone, it wasn’t enough to knock him onto his ass. My next swing caught him in the shoulder, but he immediately followed it up with a kick to my kneecap that almost made me drop to the floor.
Just as I started to think that I was going to need a new strategy to deal with him, Neko rolled out from underneath the SUV again, but this time, the wiry vamp was too distracted to see her movements. While I kept the bloodsucker occupied, the petite Japanese girl got into position and then slammed both fists at once into the backs of both his knees.
He couldn’t help but collapse to his knees on the hard linoleum, and the moment that he started to plunge down, I tossed the bat into my left hand and jammed the fingers of my right hand straight into his eye sockets. The wiry motherfucker howled and clutched at his eyes, but by then, I had wiggled my fingers around enough to make both his eyes stream blood and pulp.
I pulled my fingers out of his eye sockets and wiped them off onto my pants, and then I slammed my open palm up onto his nose to try to jam his nasal bones back up into his brain. His head snapped back hard enough that it bounced against his own spine, but he was still conscious, so I needed to try a different approach.
“Grab the axe!” I shouted to Neko.
The pink-haired girl sprinted toward the tall vamp’s corpse and started to wrench the axe out of his back. She had to press down on his spine with one foot to give herself a little leverage, but after she pulled and pushed on the axe handle for a few seconds, she finally broke it free from where she had wedged it in earlier.
As soon as she brought it over to me, she stepped back out of the way so I could raise the axe up and crash it down straight on top of the wiry vamp’s skull. It sank a few inches into the top of his head, but I lifted it again and slammed it down into the same spot before he could recover.
This time, the axe penetrated all the way through his skull and into his brain. The vamp gurgled as the blade scrambled his brains, and then he just flopped down to the floor beside the SUV’s front tires.
“Fuck,” I panted. “You okay?”
“I’m good,” Neko said, but then she winced and glanced down at her bleeding elbow. “Well, almost good, I guess.”
“Shit, is that from when you grabbed the axe?” I asked as I hurried toward her.
“Yeah, I just saw the box on the wall, so I just broke the glass,” the petite Japanese girl replied with a shrug. “It seemed like the fastest way to help.”
“You’
re incredible, you know that?” I smiled as I grabbed her arm and raised it to my lips. “Let me fix that for you. It’s the least I can do.”
“I definitely won’t say no to that,” Neko said as she bit her lip. “Fuck. I’m shaking. Those guys almost got me. You saved my ass a bunch.”
I licked up the worst of the blood from her elbow, swallowed a little bit extra from her wound, and then ran my tongue across the cuts so that they immediately scarred over.
“Better?” I asked as I gently released my grip on her arm.
“Thank you, Sam,” the pink-haired girl murmured. “Are you okay? They were really strong. The skinny fucker was so fast.”
“They must have just killed somebody,” I said, “and from the smell of it, the body is still here. Plus, I’m pretty sure this asshole left in the middle of the fight to go get another hit of blood to try to make himself stronger.”
“Not that it did him any good,” Neko said. “Not against you, anyway.”
“Or you,” I pointed out.
“Like I said,” she chuckled. “I barely survived that. He almost grabbed my hair and my arm. All the judo training in the universe wouldn’t have saved me. I just tried to stay away until you could hit him.”
“You didn’t have to help me, you know.” I reached out to touch her arm, and she was still trembling.
“I know,” the Japanese girl replied, “and if you’re mad, I understand, but I didn’t want to just leave you. I couldn’t, not when there was a chance that I might be able to help.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” I said, and then I tucked a strand of pink hair back behind her ear. “Your judo skills are really something else.”
“That wasn’t judo,” Neko said with a shrug. “It was tag.”
I just laughed and suddenly pulled her into a tight embrace.
“Now come on,” I said when I released her. “We should check the rest of the dealership really quickly before we go get the rest of the girls.”
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 4
