“Fine,” I snarled, and then I jumped back just before they reached me, gripped the bat with both hands, and started to swing.
Chapter 8
The first swing of my bat bounced off the female vamp’s elbow, but it still caught her with enough force that she had to pull her arm back to recover. Before I could hit her again, the skinny male changed his direction at the last second and barreled straight into my shoulder instead of my throat.
The impact popped my shoulder out of joint, and the pain rippled through the rest of my body like someone had just set my arm on fire. I had never dislocated my shoulder before, but even though it hurt like goddamn hell, I didn’t make a sound.
It was for the same reason as why I didn’t just take out one of my guns and shoot both these assholes. I didn’t want to draw the attention of the cop car on the other side of this building, much less advertise my location to all the NYPD bloodsuckers.
But since my left arm just hung limply at my side, I knew that I needed to stall just long enough for my body to heal itself. I dropped the bat a little lower in my right hand so I could swing it one-handed, and I took a step back to avoid another punch from the tall woman.
The moment I stepped back, the male vamp grabbed my left wrist and started to tug like he would rip my whole arm off my torso. And based on his grip strength, I had no doubt that he could actually do it.
While my insides shouted at the pain, I held the Louisville slugger like a sword and then just jabbed it toward the skinny man’s ribs. The head of the bat rammed into his side with a loud crack of bones, so clearly, at least one or two ribs had been fractured with the blow.
The vamp immediately released his hold on me and staggered backward, while the Amazonian female stopped another swing of her fists so she could catch her companion before he fell.
“Now hold on just a minute!” I hissed as I backed up a few feet, so we could all catch our breaths and so my shoulder would seal itself back up into the joint.
“You’re the one who came busting up into our territory,” the female vamp growled.
“Ah, okay,” I said and then tucked the baseball bat between my legs for a second. “Well, look-- I didn’t know this was your territory, so I’m very sorry that I intruded, but if you don’t--”
“Didn’t you see the fucking signs, man?” the skinny male demanded.
While I tried to remember if I’d seen any signs on my way into the courtyard, I wrapped my right hand around my left shoulder, clenched my teeth together, and then just kind of shoved everything back into the socket.
If it was possible, it hurt even worse than the initial dislocation had, but I just gritted my teeth a little more and forced myself to remain quiet. For the first time on this trip, I wished that Lily was with me, since her background in nursing could have helped pop my shoulder back into the socket a little more easily.
Then again, it wasn’t like I could just tell the two vamps to excuse me for a second while my friend fixed my arm. And besides, I was a vamp, so it wasn’t like I could do any real damage to the joint. Everything would heal and repair itself just like it was supposed to-- it was just a matter of a minute or two.
And that meant I really needed to stall.
“Uh, what signs?” I asked. “I was just trying to avoid the cops, that’s all. You know they’re killing all of us, right?”
“Nah,” the woman replied. “Maybe they’re killing all of you, but they wouldn’t stand a chance against us.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow as the throbbing in my shoulder started to subside. “And why is that?”
“Because of the fucking signs, you jackass!” the male vamp almost shouted, but when the woman cleared her throat, he became a little quieter again. “Anybody who sees them knows better than to come into this courtyard.”
“Except for you, apparently,” the Amazon said.
“Yeah, I didn’t see any signs, sweetheart,” I said. “If you want people to know this is your territory, you might want to make it a little more obvious.”
“The bodies, you idiot,” the female vamp said. “Didn’t you see the bodies on the street lights?”
“So I guess that was you,” I sighed. “You know that’s gross, right? I mean, that’s some primitive fucking shit right there.”
“Nah, that’s just a good way to mark our territory,” the Amazon replied.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, “but it’s also a good way to advertise that there’s two civilian bloodsuckers in here, and I’m sure the cops would love to know about that.”
“He’s fucking bluffing,” the skinny male said.
“Obviously,” the woman said with a roll of her eyes. “He can’t hand us over to the cops unless he turns himself in, and he already knows what the NYPD does with our kind if we don’t belong with them.”
“That still doesn’t change the fact that those meat-sticks back there are some real nasty shit,” I said. “I don’t actually think I’m gonna mind when I kill you two.”
“Now I know you’re bluffing,” the male vamp said as he straightened his posture. “There’s no way you’re a match for both of us.”
I realized that the pain in my shoulder and arm had stopped, so I knew that everything had finally healed itself back together. It was right in the nick of time, too, since just then, the male bloodsucker straightened his posture and stretched, and that could only mean that his ribs had healed just like my shoulder.
And that meant we were all on equal footing again.
But not for fucking long.
“Wanna bet?” I grinned.
I grabbed my bat, lined my hands up like I was about to step up to the plate, and then drew back to pack as much momentum into my slugger as possible.
The female vamp was the first to attack again, but this time, she didn’t use her fists. Instead, she rammed her knee up toward my groin, but even though there was a lot of rage behind her kick, I was able to twist out of the way in time.
The moment that I dodged her knee, I Barry Bondsed my bat toward her skull. The weapon smashed into the side of her head and knocked her into the other vampire, just as he got ready to launch himself into the fight against me. They both stumbled backward, so I pulled back my slugger again for a second round.
I started to swing again, but both the Amazonian vamp and the skinny male recovered from their stumble faster than I had anticipated. And even though I expected the woman to have a gigantic hole in the side of her skull, there was only a slight dent in her hairline.
As I watched it, her skull started to repair itself, so it looked like someone was blowing air into a balloon until her skull was completely reinflated. It looked like I had never even hit her in the first place.
Shit.
“Well, somebody’s well-fed,” I muttered.
The female bloodsucker just grinned, nodded at the male, and then leaped toward me at the same time that he did.
I swung my bat toward the woman’s head again, but just before I slammed it into her temple, I slowed down, jumped back, and twisted the bat mid-air toward the male vamp’s throat.
Even though the blow caught him by surprise, it wasn’t enough to separate his head from his body. But he did at least have to splutter to catch his breath for a minute, and while he clawed at the sudden pain in his throat, I turned all my attention to the fanged female.
“Fuck you, man,” she snarled.
“I’m down if you are,” I said with a grin.
The Amazon found it less funny than I did. She just bared her teeth, picked her friend up by the back of his shirt and the seat of his pants, and then spun around like she was about to shot-put him toward me.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered as I realized that was actually her plan.
The skinny male flew toward me like a fucking vampire bat, and as he stretched out his arms toward me and opened his mouth wide enough to bite half my goddamn neck, I forced myself to wait until the last goddamn second to raise my bat.
Just
before he landed on me, I popped my bat up so the handle was pointed straight at his mouth. It was too late for him to change his trajectory, so even though he tried to twist away, he couldn’t do it in time. The handle of my Louisville slugger slammed into his open mouth so hard that it knocked out his front two teeth and then instantly made him gag.
I ripped out the bat from his mouth and took out his two front bottom teeth on my way out. As black blood started to ooze out from between his lips, he tumbled into me, but he was in so much pain that I just kicked him off me.
The male vamp crumpled to the ground, but as much as I wanted to finish him off, I glanced up to see one very angry Amazon headed toward me like a bull on a fucking mission.
I would have to finish off the skinny asshole in a minute. Right now, I adjusted my grip on my bat again, but I immediately realized it would be harder to hit her this time around.
Instead of trying to land one big haymaker, she kept her fists pumping in one punch after another, so eventually, one of them would find their target. And in the meantime, it made it hard for me to find an opening to hit her body.
I knew it would take a lot of energy to keep swinging my bat like I was supposed to, and I didn’t want to waste any if there was a chance at least half my hits wouldn’t reach my opponent. So I decided to use it as a kind of shield instead.
I raised it up to my waist level so it stuck straight out in front of me, and it slammed right into the woman’s stomach before she could land a single punch. If it had been a sword, it would have impaled her, but instead, it just kept her at arm’s length.
It took her a second to realize how I’d stopped her, but as soon as she did, she stopped swinging her fists at me and tried to step to the side to get my slugger out of her ribs.
I just took a few steps forward to jam the bat even deeper into her stomach. Every time she tried to step one way, I stepped in that same direction with her but moved forward at the same time, so I continued to ram the slugger further into her abdomen every few seconds.
She might as well have been impaled on the end of a sword, because no matter what she did, she couldn’t get away from me, but no matter how much she swerved, she still couldn’t get close enough to land a fucking punch.
“Get up, you idiot,” she barked at the other vampire.
Even as dark blood continued to dribble out of his mouth to cover his entire chin in a black goatee, the skinny male stumbled to his feet and growled. It was probably supposed to be intimidating, but since his front teeth were missing, only his pointed canines really showed when he snarled at me.
“I mean this in the nicest way,” I snickered, “but your teeth kind of ruin the whole scary vampire vibe you had going on.”
The male bloodsucker paused just long enough to reach up and feel his missing teeth, and that was all the opening that I needed. Immediately, I pulled the bat back, rammed it into the Amazon woman’s stomach so all the air exploded out of her lungs, and then brought the end of the bat straight up toward the man’s blood-covered jawline.
When the bat cracked into his chin, it rocked his neck back so hard that I heard all the vertebrae in his neck crack. His head stayed bent backward at first, so I jabbed the female vamp again, even though she was still winded, just to make sure that she didn’t interfere with my kill.
Then I brought my Louisville slugger all the way overhead like an axe, and I slammed it down onto the male bloodsucker’s exposed throat. His neck muscles had already been weakened from the whiplash of my first hit, so this blow busted straight through his windpipe.
The skinny male was able to suck in one desperate gasp of air, but it just leaked out of his bloody mess of a throat, so it never made it to his lungs. He dropped down to his knees, but he still wasn’t able to lift his head upright, so all I saw was the pulpy flesh that my bat had left behind.
But since he was on his knees now, this should be just like tee ball.
I squared my stance, lined my slugger up with his neck, and then collided the bat with what was left of his throat. Blood and tissue sprayed everywhere, but I just lined my weapon up again and pounded over and over into the skinny vamp’s throat.
The smell of moldy vampire blood filled the air, and I even felt flecks of his blood enter my eyes, but I just blinked them away and kept swinging until the man’s head finally separated from his neck. It bounced against the ground and rolled over to rest at the female bloodsucker’s feet.
At first, the woman just stared at it, but then she looked up at me, glanced at the bloodsoaked bat in my hands, and then ran back in the direction that she had come from.
“Not so fast,” I muttered.
I wasn’t about to leave her behind me, just so she could sneak up on me and try to take me by surprise. She had started this fucking fight, but I’d be goddamned if I wasn’t going to finish it.
As I chased her across the courtyard, I was surprised that the Amazonian woman didn’t just keep running and then try to lose me in the darkness. She must have heard how close on her heels I was, because just as I stretched out my arm to grab the back of her shirt, the female vamp vaulted up onto one of the lamp posts, climbed up it like a tree, and then perched on top like some kind of wildcat.
“You know you’re not the only one who can climb, right?” I laughed as I stopped at the bottom of the lamp post. “Where do you think you can go from there?”
“I can’t believe you fucking killed him,” she moaned, and the lamp post swayed a little underneath her weight.
“You were both gonna kill me,” I pointed out, “or did you already forget that?”
“It’s our territory,” the female bloodsucker said, “or at least it was. Of course we had to defend it.”
“Well, look-- you can either come down here on your own and fight me, or I can drag you down by your ankles,” I said. “Your choice.”
The Amazonian vamp tried to pull her legs up a little further, and the lamp post swayed back and forth even more. As I looked up at her now, I saw that her blouse had come unbuttoned at the top, so her full cleavage was on display in the orange light of the street lamp, and her long legs looked powerful in their skin-tight leggings.
I might have even called her hot, if she hadn’t just tried to kill me.
“There is a third option,” the woman said with a sly smile.
“I doubt that,” I sighed, “but go ahead.”
“We don’t have to fight each other at all,” she replied. “My man is dead now, so… you could be my new partner.”
The tall vampire wrapped her legs around the lamp post and slid back down to the ground like it was a fireman’s pole. She kept the lamp post in between us-- as if that would do her any good-- but then slowly, she unfastened another button on her blouse, so I could see the black lace bra that pushed her heavy tits together.
“What do you think, handsome?” the female vamp asked as she ran her fingers along the swell of her breasts to tease me. “How would you like to stay here and patrol this territory together?”
I couldn’t help but find her sexy, but even as her right hand continued to graze and cup her own tits for me, I noticed that she had slowly started to reach her left hand into her pocket. I cocked my head to the side and pretended to consider her offer, but really, I just wanted to stall long enough to see what she was up to with her left hand.
“Well?” the female vamp demanded. “What do you think?”
There was a sudden flash of metal as she took her left hand out of her pocket and launched herself toward me, but I was ready for her surprise attack. I flung my bat up to block the blow of the knife in her hand, and the blade clattered to the ground beside us.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” I said as I used one hand to grab her half-unbuttoned blouse. “I’ve got bigger plans.”
The Amazonian woman snarled and tried to bite my wrist, but I just shoved her backward. She stumbled but caught herself just before her ass hit the ground, but by the time she really regained her balance, I was
already on top of her.
I swung the bat into her ribs, and the impact cracked into her bones hard enough that it sent spit flying out of her mouth. I swung again from the opposite side, and when the metal crashed into her ribs a second time, I swore that I heard one of her lungs pop like a water balloon.
The female bloodsucker gasped and doubled over, but even as blood started to leak out of her mouth, she wasn’t ready to give up. Instead, she just kept her head down and barreled toward me. She was weaker now, so I just cracked my slugger down onto the top of her skull, and she crumpled like a leaf to the ground.
As the vamp rolled onto her back, she flailed about with her arms to try and grab me, but from the blank look in her eyes, it looked like I had severed her optic nerves with my last blow. But when she still managed to find my ankle and started to dig her long nails into my flesh, I kicked aside her hand and took a step back so she couldn’t reach me.
“You fucking piece of shit,” the woman growled and then coughed up a mouthful of blood. “I tried to be nice to you!”
“Oh, do you mean the first time that you tried to kill me?” I asked. “Or the second time, when you were being all nice to my face so you could secretly stab me in the throat?”
This time, the woman didn’t answer, and instead, she just snarled and gnashed her teeth again. She tried to push herself off the ground and find me again, but her vision didn’t look like it was going to come back anytime soon, and I knew the nicest thing for me to do at this point was just to put her down.
I reversed my grip on the Louisville slugger so my thumbs pointed toward the handle and the head of the bat pointed straight down at the female vamp’s head. Then just as she managed to prop herself up onto one elbow, I slammed the end of the bat down into the middle of her face.
It only took two blows to smash completely through her skull, and when the end of my slugger was caked in moldy vamp brains and black blood, I staggered back and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth (Book 3): Vampire Lord 3 Page 10
