by Mia Archer
“I’m afraid if you want to kill me to free your friend then you’re going to have to work harder than that,” she said. “Besides, I think she’s more into me now than she is you.”
Again there was that twinkle in her eyes. She stared down at me with pure fury mixing with that twinkle in her eyes. Meanwhile my mouth went dry. I couldn’t believe she was telling the truth, but there was something about the way she was looking at me that made me think it might be the terrible truth.
“You’re bullshitting,” I said.
“You’d like it if I was bullshitting, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “But she’s going to be mine, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to be into that sort of thing back in the time period you came from,” I said.
Veronica shrugged. “I mean my mom wouldn’t be thrilled if she found out about it, but she’s been dead for a couple of decades and she wouldn’t have been thrilled to find out her daughter was a vampire either. Turns out becoming undead opens your mind to some things.”
“Just not the desire to keep up with pop culture,” I muttered.
“No, not that,” she said. “But I’m more than willing to try new things, and your girlfriend is going to be a very fun toy for me to break in.”
Then she did something I wasn’t expecting. She moved so fast that she was on top of me before I could react. It’d be nice to have reaction time like that, but as far as I could tell that wasn’t part of the supernatural package that came with being a reaper.
She leaned in close. So close that she was practically kissing me. I could feel her breath on me, and it wasn’t so hot.
Like her breath literally wasn’t hot. That was the thing about being a vampire. She didn’t have much in the way of body temperature other than the body temp she stole from other people when she was sucking their blood, so naturally the breath coming out of her wouldn’t be all that warm.
It wasn’t all that hot in the figurative sense as well, though. Like we’re talking apparently being undead and preying on the living gave a girl a pretty nasty case of permanent morning breath. It was like the kind of smell that wafted out of some of the more carnivorous animals’ enclosures at the zoo during feeding time, only with a slightly salty smell to it that seemed only natural considering she was sucking other people’s blood.
“You know it really doesn’t have to be like this,” Veronica said, running a hand down my arm.
I shivered. I told myself that shiver was because there was a fucking vampire on top of me doing her best to play the whole seductive game, but honestly I couldn’t be sure whether that shiver was a response to a predator, or if maybe there was something about this girl that actually interested me.
“How could this be anything but what it is?” I asked, trying to distract her more than anything. Tendrils of dark magic were gathering behind her, and the last thing I needed was for her to see the trap I was setting up for her before it landed.
I figured if I couldn’t beat her in a fair fight then I’d try an unfair fight where I tossed around some magic.
One of the vampire cheerleaders who’d been doing Veronica’s bidding opened her mouth like she was going to warn her, but I flicked her with a tendril of magic that sent her flying into the darkness beyond the little pool of light created by all the cars that were still rocking as vampire cheerleaders invaded them and ruined everyone’s night.
Veronica licked her lips. Then she licked my cheek. Which, honestly, was more creepy than seductive.
“We could be together you know,” she said. “I’ve never been with a reaper before. For all that you’re getting on me for not keeping up with the latest music and movies, I’m not above having a new experience here and there.”
I blinked. “Seriously? That’s your move?”
She blinked right back at me. She seemed downright confused by what was going on here.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You’re going to lick my cheek and act all seductive?” I asked. “That’s how you seduce me? Do you have any idea how creepy and gross that is?”
“I mean it usually works,” she muttered. “Why isn’t it working on you?”
“You might be hot, but you’re crazy,” I said as tendrils of my death magic grabbed her, looking for all the world like a scene straight out of the kind of Japanese cartoon that I’d totally never seen while browsing some of the darker corners of the Internet, thank you very much. “Besides, there’s only one vampire cheerleader I’m into, and I’m very much into the idea of her not being a vampire cheerleader if I can help it.”
I pulled back with the magic and sent her flying back into the darkness. Huh. That was a lot easier when I just used my magic instead of relying on my fists.
I stood and dusted myself off. Put a little weight on the leg that’d snapped while I was doing my ill-advised Jim Kirk impression to see if everything was still in working order there. It felt like it was doing well enough, I suppose. I could put weight on it, and that was something.
“Um, so question,” Jimmy said from behind his hiding spot in the bushes.
“Shoot,” I said, eyeing the darkness around us to see where the attack would come from next.
“If you could just use that magic stuff to take her out then why didn’t you do it from the get go?”
“Because I was pissed off and wanted to hit something, and if you keep asking annoying questions like that you’re going to be the next thing I take my frustrations out on.”
“Point taken,” Jimmy said. “Just pretend I’m not here and I didn’t just ask a stupid question.”
“Won’t be that difficult considering you’ve been pretending you weren’t here ever since we got in the shit,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, a touch of anger in his voice.
Which was a surprise. That was more heat than he’d shown the entire short time I’d known him. I wheeled around on Jimmy, then looked down when I realized he was still very much in hiding behind his bushes.
If there was any justice then he’d get a poison ivy oil on his skin that caused him to constantly get a new rash that healed up just in time to reoccur.
“Think about it,” I said. “You’ve been hiding from these assholes for your whole life, and for your whole undeath. Is that any way for you to lead your life? Or your undeath? Whatever the fuck it is we call it?”
“I’ll lead my undeath however I want, thank you very much,” Jimmy said, sounding a touch annoyed.
“Yeah, well if you want to hide for the rest of your unnatural death then that’s your business,” I said. “But maybe it wouldn’t kill you to actually stand up for yourself from time to time.”
“You have no idea what it’s like,” he said. “Having them treating me like that for decades…”
“I have no idea what it’s like, you’re right,” I said. “But I do know you’re going to have to stand up for yourself at some point if you don’t want to have an eternity of torture at the hands of Veronica and her friends.”
I waited for the response, but it didn’t come. That was weird. I wheeled around, and found that Jimmy had finally come out of his hiding place. Unfortunately for Jimmy he’d come out of his hiding place because Veronica had snuck around us and grabbed him without making any noise that would alert me she was moving in on us.
“What now?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“What now?” she asked. “You’re going to surrender to me if you want your friend here to live.”
I looked between her and Jimmy. He looked appropriately terrified, which is about what I expected from him. Maybe it would be a mercy if he got offed considering the unpleasant unlife he’d been living so far.
“My friend?” I said. “I brought the guy along because I thought he might be some help in fighting off you fucking vampires, but he’s been pretty useless. One less vampire in the world isn’t going to hurt my feelings.”
I
watched Jimmy closely as I said that. He was looking more and more pissed off with every word. His eyes narrowed. His body seemed to tense. I almost thought he was going to launch himself at me, but then at the last moment he pulled his arm back and landed an elbow right in the middle of Veronica’s gut.
I’m not sure what she was expecting. Maybe she thought I actually would surrender, but it was clear from the way her eyes went wide that she wasn’t expecting Jimmy to land an elbow in the gut.
He wheeled around and, with the same vampire strength I’d seen Veronica showing off, he slammed his fist into her gut again. That was enough to send her down to her knees where he slammed his knee into her chin, sending her flying back. Then he was on top of her landing hit after hit.
I’d like to say that I stopped the carnage right away. That I stepped in to make sure he didn’t hurt her all that much. I’d like to say that, but unfortunately I can’t.
No, I let him wallop on her for a good little while. I wanted her to feel some of the annoyance she’d been visiting on me lately. I did reach out with some of my death magic and grab his fist when he raised his claws and looked like he was on the verge of pulling a Temple of Doom which I’m pretty sure would’ve been enough to end her permanently since vampire death seemed to center around removing the heart.
“What are you doing?” he growled, turning on me and hitting me with some glowing eyes that utterly failed to intimidate me.
“What I’m doing is stopping you from killing an asset,” I said. “But I’d be much obliged if you would continue holding her down for a moment while I try something.”
“What are you going to try?” he asked.
“We’re going to see if it’s possible to remove that vampire spirit from her without killing her ass,” I said, staring down at her. “Because I suddenly find myself in need of an experimental subject to see if something like that is possible with a vampire who’s been possessed for awhile.”
Veronica’s eyes went wide as she realized what I was about to do. She squirmed and tried to get away from Jimmy, but it would seem he’d finally realized he was a vampire, complete with the strength that went along with, with the practical upshot being there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to get away from him.
“You can’t let her do this!” Veronica said.
“You did sort of kill the last vampire you tried that on,” Jimmy said, suddenly seeming uncertain.
“I did, but I figure I might be able to pull it off. Besides, I figure if it doesn’t work out then it’s not the end of the world. It just means there’s one less vampire for us to worry about. Unless you want to tell me where the head vampire who created all of you is hiding out so I can lift your curse the old fashioned way?”
“Are you talking to me or to Veronica?” Jimmy asked.
“Either one of you, really,” I said. “But Veronica is the only one who’s going to get the experimental treatment if she doesn’t give me the answer I want. You’ve been enough help that you’re not on my shit list anymore.”
“That’s comforting,” Jimmy muttered.
32
Exorcising the Demon
“So do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Jimmy asked.
“Well the first thing that’d be helpful is if I didn’t have all these vampire cheerleaders coming at me while I’m trying to work!” I growled.
As though on cue, one of those freshman girls threw herself at me with her fangs bared. I slapped her back into the woods with a tendril of death magic, and she let out a surprised yelp as she went flying.
“You were right, by the way,” I said. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to take them out my way.”
It was even starting to be a little fun. Sure it’d been fun beating the shit out of Veronica one on one earlier, but it was a lot easier taking them on with my advantage as a reaper rather than trying to fight off all the vampire cheerleaders at once in a physical fight where they had the advantage.
“So how are we going to do this?” Jimmy asked.
“We aren’t going to do anything,” I said. “You’re going to sit there and hold her down, and I’m going to see if there’s a more subtle way of taking out the demon lurking inside her.”
“And you’re hoping that will save your girlfriend?” Jimmy asked.
“I hope it will,” I said. “But I can’t be sure until I’ve tried it.”
I glanced around the clearing. There was another part of this that worried me, though I hadn’t given voice to that thought yet. There was the little problem of Stacy being nowhere to be found. I figured if she was out there somewhere then she should’ve been a part of the attack on all these poor bastards who were looking to do a little necking without having puncture wounds in their neck, but so far there was bupkis.
“I guess there’s nothing for it but to give this a try,” I said with a sigh.
It was a little hard at first with the way Veronica was jerking this way and that and trying to keep away from me, not to mention with the way the other vampires kept throwing themselves at me like they thought they were going to be able to actually stop me or something, but finally I managed to spear her with some of the old death magic.
Her back arched, and a moment later I found myself floating in a strange darkness. Off in the corner was a girl curled up sobbing. She wore a halter top and a set of high waisted shorts that were unfortunately coming back in style. I walked over to her, wondering if this was the real Veronica. The one who’d been trapped inside her mind for the past forty years or so while the demon vampire took control and did terrible things.
It wasn’t until I actually got close to the girl that I realized my mistake. She looked up at me and her eyes glowed. Fangs descended and the demon jumped at me.
A tricky demon. I’d watched enough of the collected works of Bruce Campbell that I probably should’ve expected something like that. Not that expecting it did a damn bit of good for me as I tumbled to what passed for the ground in this strange mental prison.
The thing clawed at me, but I realized something as it clawed at me. The thing wasn’t actually doing anything to hurt me. It also still very much looked like Veronica and not at all like the demon spirit I’d seen the last time I went rummaging around in a vampire’s soul.
There was something to that. My magic gathered around me, and I hit the thing. I didn’t get pulled into a weird place in a sort of vampire soul inception style scenario, but the thing did throw its head back and scream.
This time around the scream was even weirder, though. It was like the sound team for some movie had put together two screams, one belonging to the demon and one belonging to a girl.
Maybe that meant there was still some bit of Veronica lurking in there. I could hope, at least.
I probed around inside the thing’s mind until I found something that felt more human. Something that grabbed ahold of the death magic I’d been tossing around like a lifeline. That’s an imperfect way of describing what was going on, but it’s difficult by definition to describe something that’s supernatural and impossible to describe to mortals.
So I pulled. To keep the mortal analogies going, it was like reeling a fish in. Only I was pretty sure this was a human soul I was pulling towards me. Someone clinging desperately to the lifeline I was throwing to her.
Now there was a funny thought. I was throwing a lifeline of death to a human that’d been merged with the demon soul of a vampire. Talk about your all time contradictions.
“You’re done for, bitch,” I said to the demon as something flew out of it.
The girl was there again. In the ancient outfit. Only this time around she wasn’t curled up on what passed for a floor here sobbing. No, the moment she was out she was running at me.
Damn it. It looked like I’d just doubled the demon power in here. Maybe there wasn’t a good way to take care of these fucking vampires once they got their claws into someone’s soul without killing the poor unfortunate soul hosting them short of killing
the vamp that turned them. Assuming movie rules like that actually applied to vampires in the real world.
All the books I’d read from my dad’s library agreed that they did work that way, but I couldn’t be entirely sure that was the case since those books were usually based more on rumor and supposition than cold hard facts. It turns out it was difficult to run scientific studies on supernatural creatures that didn't want to be studied. .
Only it turns out the girl wasn’t going for me. No, she threw herself at the demon thing and started punching the ever loving shit out of it. That demon thing seemed like it’d been knocked for a loop by having the human soul ripped out of it, and it hissed and tried to get away from her but wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
I walked over. Put a hand on Veronica’s shoulder. The real Veronica, and not the Veronica who'd been such an annoying bitch for the past few days.
She wheeled on me and raised a fist when she felt my hand on her shoulder. Her chest heaved and she really was quite pretty, for all that she looked like an extra in the background of a school production of Grease from back when it was new that had a really shitty costuming budget and had to put the characters in contemporary rather than period outfits.
“I’m going to kill this thing,” she said.
“That’s a nice thought,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who can do that. Do you mind?”
She held her fist there and looked between me and the vampire demon spirit thing like she was seriously considering whether or not she was going to go after me if I was going to keep her from going after the thing, then she made a disgusted noise and stood.
“It’s all yours,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“One sec,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I mean, have you ever done this before? Am I going to like rapidly age and die or something when you pull that thing out of me? You sounded like you weren't sure this wouldn't kill me earlier.”
