Vampires Don't Sparkle!

by Mia Archer

  Namely finding that vampire chick and killing her ass so I could get my girlfriend back.

  I flew through the school halls. A janitor saw me and had the good sense to get the fuck out of the way. There were a couple of students hanging around in the band room looking like they were getting ready to make out, I guess there was no better hall than the abandoned band hall, but they also had the good sense to get the hell out of the way when they saw me swooping through the place.

  Finally I broke into the clear evening air. It was starting to get dark, and I saw something familiar at the edge of the parking lot.

  That giant boat of a convertible that looked like something straight out of a movie car rental place’s ‘50s garage. With none other than those vampires peeling out, and they had my girlfriend with them.

  I growled and took off after them, but they were moving pretty fucking fast. They turned a corner, tires screeching the entire way, and I heard sirens as one of the cops who was always hanging out around the school to generate a little revenue for the city on the backs of parents of young drivers went after them.

  I didn’t see what happened, but I did hear the screech and the loud crunch of an obvious car accident, followed very quickly by more screeching tires.

  When I rounded the corner I found a police SUV that’d been smashed in the front and was sitting in the middle of the street with its lights still flashing, its siren protesting in a weird faint warble, and smoke rising from the front that had been reduced to a hulk of twisted and mangled metal.

  That wasn’t the most interesting thing, of course. No, that prize went to the two very surprised looking cops sitting in the SUV looking at each other like they were trying to figure out if everything that’d just happened had actually just happened.

  I floated over to them and tried to pull the door open. Unfortunately it didn’t open right away and so I pulled a little harder. I guess I yanked a little too hard, because the entire door came off.

  It was odd. Now that I was closer to the SUV I saw what looked like claw marks on the glass and maybe on the top. Like there’d been something terrifying on top of the SUV trying to get in to snack on the cops.

  It honestly looked like there was a cat who’d discovered how to operate can opener technology, and the cops were the delicious tuna on the inside they were going after. Which was a pretty funny mental image, though something told me the cops wouldn’t appreciate it.

  “Get down!”

  It took me a moment to realize the cop was talking to me. He had a gun pointed at me, which was a first. There were a lot of things that’d killed me over the years, but a gun wasn’t one of them.

  I didn’t bother holding my hands up. I rolled my eyes and held the scythe up.

  “Come on buddy,” I said. “You know who I am. Can you cut the…”

  I was cut off by the loud sound of a shot ringing out and echoing off the buildings all around us. Though that was nothing compared to the pain that went shooting through me. I looked down and saw blood coming out of my robes.

  Of course they were black robes so it’s not like I had to worry all that much about staining, but it was still annoying having this asshole trying to fill me with holes! Who the hell did he think he was?

  I swayed back and forth a couple of times, trying to hold it together and knowing that I probably wasn’t going to be able to. There’d been a lot of ways I’d been killed over the years, but this was the first time that killing involved bullets.

  It was just as I’d always suspected over the years. Getting shot hurt like a motherfucker! I swayed a few more times and then fell over as the world went black all around me.

  Again.

  My last thought before it was lights out was I was going to give a piece of my mind to whatever asshole on the force thought it was acceptable to shoot an innocent teenage girl who tried rescuing them!

  24

  Local PD

  I blinked a couple of times as a bright light shone down on me. For a confused moment I thought it was the bright light at the end of the tunnel that everyone says they see when they’ve died. There was something funny about the thought of a bright light hitting me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Something about…

  Then it all came rushing back to me. Along with the pain of what I imagined were a couple of bullet holes that were quickly knitting themselves up as my body came back to life.

  I really hoped it spit that lead out, Wolverine style, when all was said and done.

  “Huh,” I sputtered. “Getting shot must not be all that bad if I didn’t even have an out of body with that one.”

  That or the pain had been so severe that I’d completely blocked the whole out of body experience. Yeah, I really didn’t want to get shot ever again. That hurt like a motherfucker!

  “Holy shit!” someone shouted.

  I blinked a couple more times and looked around. I found myself staring at a couple of very confused EMTs as well as a familiar face smiling down at me and not looking nearly as worried as the Chief of Police should be after one of his guys gunned down an innocent girl.

  “I am so suing your department,” I said with a smile.

  “Then I’m totally releasing the bodycam footage that shows you ripping the door off its hinges with a black cloud all around you and an eerie glow in your eyes,” he said with a grin of his own.

  “Glowing eyes?” I asked. “That’s a new one.”

  “I’ve seen your dad do it a couple of times,” he said. “Usually when he was really ticked off. So the question is what had you so worked up?”

  I coughed a couple of times, and immediately regretted it for all that it was an involuntary reaction to having a tickle in my chest. The problem was that tickle in my chest was caused by a bullet hole that was healing up faster than any wound would ever heal for a normal mortal, and coughing meant it opened up just a touch.

  “Man that hurts,” I said.

  “Yeah, at least you get to heal up nice and quick,” the Chief said. “It hurts even more when you have to heal the old fashioned way. You’re lucky I got here before they took you to the hospital.”

  “Oh God,” I said. “Not those old sawbones with their anesthetic and scalpels.”

  The Chief got down on his knees next to me. I pulled myself up. One of the EMTs looked like he was going to protest, but a single look from the Chief was enough to get him to settle down.

  “Let the girl get up if she wants to,” he said. “You of all people should know she’ll be fine.”

  “Well maybe,” he said. “But this is the first time we’ve seen her get shot.”

  The Chief grunted, and the EMT backed off. Then he turned that glare on me. “So do you want to tell me why one of my new SUVs was destroyed by a bunch of idiot teenagers who jumped on the hood and clawed it open? Jenkins is going in for early retirement after everything that happened today, and he’s only a year out of the academy!”

  I shook my head. “Maybe if he’s shooting at unarmed teenagers he should be retiring early.”

  “That’s not fair and you know it Gwen,” he said. “Though admittedly his introduction to the supernatural was a little more… spectacular than your typical introduction in this town.”

  I groaned and closed my eyes. My dad had never told me all that much about what was involved in his work aside from ferrying the souls of the dead to the other side, but I was starting to suspect there was another side of this job he’d never told me about aside from leaving a bunch of books about the supernatural available on the shelves where of course I was going to gravitate towards them because what kid wouldn’t be drawn to that stuff?

  “They were vampires,” I said.

  The Chief looked off to the side. I turned to find myself facing another cop who looked older, but not as old as the old man. The older guy grumbled as he reached into his wallet and pulled out a couple of twenties then handed them to the Chief.

  My eyes narrowed. “You were betting on this?”
<
br />   The Chief shook his head and chuckled. “Sorry. I’ve been working with your dad on this stuff for so long that I forget you’re new to all of this.”

  “Yeah, I am just a little new to all this,” I said. “And a little annoyed, if you haven’t figured that out.”

  “If it makes you feel any better the guy who shot you is going to be put on paid administrative leave for a little while,” the Chief said. “Not quite the early retirement he was hoping for, but he’ll get some training on the more supernatural aspects of the job.”

  I rolled my eyes at that. “Oh yeah. The greatest punishment a bunch of cops can ever give out.”

  The Chief’s eyes narrowed. Then he sighed.

  “I can tell we’re getting off on the wrong foot here,” he said. “I’m sorry. When you’re on this job long enough you have to get a sense of humor about this stuff or you lose it. That’s something you’re going to have to learn.”

  I sighed too. “Yeah, I’m sorry too. I’m having sort of a bad day right now.”

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked. “You never know. We might be able to help you. Cops are able to do things right from time to time.”

  He still had that smile on his face, so I figured he was making a little joke at his expense. So I decided to bite my tongue. Like most teens I had a natural distrust of authority figures, and I was still royally pissed considering I just got my ass shot, but the guy seemed like he was genuinely trying to help me so I figured I should take the olive branch and play nice.

  “Yeah, well I’ve just discovered that my girlfriend has been turned into a vampire. I’ve been chasing the vampires that turned her into a vampire for like a week now but they get away every time I think I’ve got them cornered. Not to mention a manager on the swim team that I can’t swim on anymore because of the family business got killed last night because my girlfriend was stupid enough to try and take the vampires out on her own which is probably what got her turned into a fucking vampire in the first place.”

  I trailed off. Mostly because I was so pissed off that I couldn’t think of much else to say. What else was there to say? I was on my own for the first time ever, and I felt like I’d been thrown into the deep end without ever getting a swimming lesson.

  If I didn’t figure out how to stop these vampires then there were going to be a lot more dead kids, and that was something I desperately wanted to avoid if I could.

  “Sounds like you have a full plate,” the Chief said. “I’m not going to deny that. Still, it could be worse.”

  I glared at him. “How could it possibly be worse?”

  He held up his hand and started ticking off his fingers as he went through a litany of things that could still go wrong despite everything that’d happened.

  “Well you could’ve gotten shot tonight and not be immune to that sort of damage for one,” he said. “Not to mention you could’ve run up against a bunch of vampires as a regular person and gone missing like some of the other missing persons who’ve been showing up in my office lately. Thanks for giving me that little tidbit of information, by the way, because it’s going to make this a lot easier.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “What are you talking about, people going missing?”

  The Chief shrugged. It surprised me just how blase he was about this whole thing considering what it was he was talking about.

  “We’ve had the usual stuff going down that happens when there’s something operating around here that shouldn’t be,” he said. “Joggers disappearing in the parks. Kids going missing from the high school. A decrease in the homeless population. The usual stuff.”

  I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. I know I’d already been annoyed at how he brushed off all the craziness that was happening, but this was beyond the pale.

  “And you’re not doing anything about it?” I asked. “You’re not sending out a press release telling the world that they need to be cautious? What’s your problem?”

  He hit me with a level stare. The kind of stare that said I was acting like an idiot. I reminded myself that he’d been on the job a lot longer than I had, so maybe he had some wisdom to impart on me. For all that I thought any wisdom he wanted to impart on me wasn’t going to be wisdom I’d be interested in.

  “So what do you want me to do?” he asked. “Go to the local news and tell them people need to be more careful because there are a bunch of teenage vampires straight out of The Lost Boys operating in the area? Do you have any idea how long I’d keep my job after I did something like that?”

  “The mayor would fire you for acting crazy?” I asked.

  “Fuck no,” he growled. “He’d fire me for setting off a public panic by letting people know vampires were real. People are happier when they think they’re at the top of the food chain.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m not going to tell you how to do your job, but it’d be nice if you told all your people what’s going on so none of them try to shoot me when they see me chasing after the scary undead creatures of the night.”

  “I think we can do that,” the Chief said. “I’ll even handle all the covering up this time around since your dad isn’t around to help out with that.”

  “Yeah, and I’m sure you’re doing that out of the goodness of your heart and not because one of your boys was stupid enough to take a shot at a teenage girl without verifying she was a danger first.”

  “Whatever,” the Chief said with a sigh. “We are going to have to learn how to work together at some point, you know.”

  “Maybe so,” I said. “Anyway. I’ve got some vampires to hunt, so if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Of course,” the Chief said. “And I’ll try to keep as many people out of the parks as I can. I can’t promise that’s going to stop the vampires from chowing down on the occasional jogger, but I’ll do my best.”

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching out to take his hand.

  He eyed my hand for a moment, then took it.

  “Not like you’re going to be pulling me over to the other side any time soon,” he said with a grin.

  “Says you,” I said with a grin of my own that turned the good Chief several different shades of pale. “Just don’t plan your retirement or buy a boat anytime soon and you should be good. Isn’t that what usually kills old cops?”

  And with that I floated away. I still had work to do, and once again I had no idea where the hell to find the fucking vampires I was hunting.

  25

  Geekpire

  I floated back towards the school. I’m not sure why. I just knew the vampires had gone back to that school often enough that they’d probably be back there again soon enough, and it’s not like I could cover all the parks in town where joggers might potentially go missing or anything.

  I sighed as I rounded the corner into the parking lot. I figured it was going to be a boring night, but then Luke flew up to me with a look that was somewhere between excitement and panic.

  I felt a bit of excitement myself. If he was looking that excited then maybe it meant those assholes hadn’t run as far as I thought.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I think I found one of the vampires you’re looking for,” he said. “And he’s beating the shit out of another one!”

  A chill ran through me. If one of the vampires was beating another one then that could be Stacy getting the shit kicked out of her. One of the nasty things about being immortal was there was the whole problem of being able to live through some nasty shit that would kill someone else.

  Then I thought better of that. If it was Stacy getting the shit kicked out of her sexy undead ass then Luke would’ve said it was Stacy.

  “Lead on,” I said.

  When we got to the front entrance Jake was waiting there with anticipation written plain on his face.

  “Come on!” he said. “They’re down in the band hallway!”

  I careened down the halls, flying fast enough to keep up with my ghostly friends, and that was say
ing something since they were cheating and going through walls. When we reached the band hall that’d been such a nonstarter the night before I heard the clear sounds of a fight.

  Of course it was possible that was a fight that was going down between two mortal high school students and not a fight going down between a couple of vampires. It sounded more like one person getting the shit kicked out of them than anything.

  Still, I had to check it out. I rounded the corner and came to a stop as I realized I knew the vampires who were getting into it.

  One of them turned to look at me, and he recognized me. Unfortunately he was too busy getting the shit kicked out of him to do much of anything. Which included warning the vampire who was beating the shit out of him.

  Which might be good for him, considering it looked like he was getting a firsthand introduction to that immortal beatdown thing I’d been worried Stacy would be suffering.

  I needed something to lash out at. It didn’t matter that this bloodsucker wasn’t the one who’d presumably turned Stacy. All I cared about was there was an asshole in front of me with fangs, and it was time to kick some vampire ass.

  I slammed into the fucker. I didn’t even bother to use the whole death magic thing. No, I wanted to get a little up close and personal with this one.

  The vampire grunted as we went tumbling to the ground end over end. I didn’t see what happened to the other one who’d been getting the shit kicked out of him, but I figured he was probably going to be running for the hills considering what’d been going on with the other vampire assholes who ran whenever it seemed like I was getting somewhere.

  We slammed into a couple of doors that flew open. I had a view of a long shelf full of trophies that seemed odd for the band, choir, and drama hallway, then we were rolling down some steps that were in the middle of the fucking room for some weird reason.