Vampire Dave, aka “Deathbringer,” took another drag from his vape pen and sighed as Sofi thrust the stake at his chest. With lightning-fast reflexes, he gripped her wrist and wrenched it upward. A cracking like dry twigs sounded, followed by a scream of immense pain. Sofi dropped her weapon, and Vampire Dave kicked her violently to the floor.
“Tisk, tisk,” he warned with this thick German accent as he shook his finger at her. “You cannot come into my work and cause such … problems. And here I thought the French had manners.”
As he scolded her, I took a step forward, hopeful she’d at least caused a distraction through her impatience. But before my foot touched the floor, his attention was on me.
“As I was saying, Mr. Bones. You are surprising. At first, I was shocked to find no splattered remains on the pavement. It was quite a mystery. She, on the other hand, I knew where she had gone. After all, she used something of mine to get there.” He pointed a pale, slender finger at the canvas bag by Sofi’s side. “I believe you even were kind enough to bring it back to me.”
My heart sank. Not once had I thought to tell her to leave the amulet behind. So stupid. On both our parts. I should have known better. But here we were, delivering what the bastard wanted. No wonder he let us in. We were better than UPS.
“Be a good girl and kick it my way, frauline,” he said. “Or do I have to come and take it from you?”
Sofi pulled herself back to her feet, careful not to put any pressure on her broken wrist and kicked the bag in his direction. He stooped down, sorted through our armory, and plucked the amulet from the sack.
“You did, come prepared!” He laughed and raised his vape to his mouth again. Only this time when he inhaled, he frowned. “Empty…” he muttered.
“Where did you take my sister?” Tears streamed down Sofi’s cheeks as she spoke, but she did not whimper.
“Why, she is right here!” His arms outstretched, Vampire Dave twirled like the star of a musical. “And so is your Nancy. And the farmer’s daughter. And all of the other girls my dearly departed Donal procured for me.”
My eyes darted from pod to pod. He was right. These weren’t some random collection. These were all girls—all about the same age—and all with similar features. “What are you doing with these girls?” I asked.
Vampire Dave unscrewed a little cap from the end of his vape pen and walked to the closest pod. Kneeling on the floor, he pressed a few buttons on a touchscreen mounted in the bottom metal ring, and a small hole opened next to it. “Oh, it’s very wonderful. These girls, they are so very wonderful. The answer to all my problems.”
“What? They hold the key to the vampire cure?” I craned my neck for a better view of what he was up to. “Let me guess: A cure. Something in their blood that will let you hit the beach. Get a nice tan.”
Still on his knees, Vampire Dave unscrewed the cartridge from his vape pen and attached it to the hole in the tank. “A cure? Why would we want a cure? You can have your daylight. The night is much more fun.” He laughed, pushed another button on the canister’s control board, and the machine let out a small hiss. “I’ve found something much, much better. Something that will give me the one thing even vampires need.”
“Love?” Sofi asked. “These girls will never love you.”
He plucked the vape cartridge from the canister, reattached it to its battery, and took a deep puff. “Vampires do not need love.” He coughed as he chuckled. “But we do need money. And this right here…” He waved his vaporizer at us and blew out a cloud of dark smoke. “This will make me rich.”
Whatever this guy was up to, it sure as hell wasn’t anything noble. The guy was nuts. And that was enough for me to know if I didn’t do something about it now, a hell of a lot more people would get hurt. I steeled my nerves, tightened my grip on the stake, and rushed forward.
Before I knew what was happening, the vampire disappeared from my view in a blur of motion, only to reappear behind Sofi. He wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her close, his mouth mere inches from her neck. Tears again began to pour down her cheeks, leaving new trails in her mascara, as she stared at me, frozen.
“Come any closer, and I will turn her,” the vampire hissed. “Try to escape, and my friends will devour you.”
A wave a of fear rushed through my body, and I tensed up, fearing an attack from behind. I glanced over my shoulder and saw nothing.
“Oh, they are there.” The vampire’s eyes roared red as if on fire, and his neck twitched. “In the hallway. Waiting for you.” He twitched again, scratched at his neck, and took another puff from his vape. Sofi’s face turned a sickly shade of green, and she coughed as the cloud of smoke enveloped them.
“What the hell is that?” she asked. “Are you vaping… blood?”
“Oh yes, but not just any blood. The blood of your sister!” The vampire laughed again and blew a cloud of smoke into Sofi’s face. “She is special, your sister. She and the rest of my little crop here. Something in the genes, and how they interact with the vampire change and the anticoagulants. A perfect mix that not only stays liquid and can be vaporized, but also enhances the powers of the vampire!”
“You made vape juice out of humans?” I tried not to gag. “How did you even find the right ones?”
“Finding is simple. Taking is the hard part. All these people, searching for their history. They send their DNA to a faceless corporation to find their “ancestry.” What do you think happens to all that data? I have all the information to find those with the genetic marker available at the click of a few keys.”
“So, you find the girls, the ones with these genes, and send some lackey to snatch them from their bedrooms while they sleep?”
“That is one way to put it. Though I like to consider it a harvest.”
“A harvest? Like you’re picking goddamn pumpkins for a Halloween party?” If he didn’t have Sofi in his grasp, I would have thrown a stake at him.
“And think what I could do with you, Mr. Bones. Imagine what powers lie dormant in your blood. You must give me a taste!”
“Fat fucking chance, asshole.” I made to lunge at him, then stopped again when he lowered his teeth back to Sofi’s neck, the fangs making deep impressions on her soft skin.
Vampire Dave sighed. “You leave me no choice then,” he said, his thick and muddled against Sofi’s neck. His eyes rolled back, showing nothing but whites, and a tiny snikt sounded from his mouth as the fangs opened to inject their venom, ensuring Sofi would turn into a vampire. Then, with a dreadful grin, he sunk his teeth into Sofi’s throat.
I couldn’t save her. Not anymore. I knew that as well as I knew a vampire’s always an asshole. But I could save the girls. Stop them from being farmed in this dickhead’s dumbass plan to be some kind of vampire drug overlord. Send him back to square one. Hel, maybe even cause a big enough distraction that I could save Sofi. Grab her and get her out of here and find someone who could mix up vampire antivenom. It was the only choice that made any sense.
I spun to the left and flung the stake in my hand forward, into the glass of the nearest pod, shattering it instantly. Pools of viscous blue liquid poured from the chamber and the body suspended inside flopped onto the floor like a dead fish. Vampire Dave shrieked, and dragged Sofi’s limp body farther to the back of the room, his eyes frantic. I made a dash forward, scooped up the bag of stakes, and began to fire them one at a time into the pods until all that remained was a mess of shattered glass, wet floor, and dead women. Satisfied I’d taken them all out, I then turned to Vampire Dave, but he and Sofi were gone. I raced to the door at the opposite side of the room, the one they’d surely escaped from, and found it locked. I pounded on it until my fists were sore, screaming through the metal until my throat burned.
Behind me, the sound of crackling glass announced I was not alone.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I should have expected it. After all, the asshole had warned me. But I had been too preoccupied with saving Sofi even t
o consider saving myself. Now, however, with the room behind me crawling with vampires streaming through the door we’d entered through, I was outnumbered.
To make matters worse, the girls in the glass pods—the ones I’d “destroyed”—well, they weren’t destroyed either. One by one they clambered up from the ground, naked and dripping blue goo as they regained their footing and awareness and focused their eyes solely on me. One of them I recognized as Nancy. Another, a mirror image of Sofi. The others? One of them was probably the vampire farmer’s daughter. But it didn’t matter. They’d all been turned. Between them and the several dozen other, fully-clothed and fully-coherent vampires who’d already entered the room, there was no way in hell I could fight them all.
Closer they came, snarling and snapping like wild dogs. I sniffed the air, and my stomach dropped when I realized what I’d done. Somehow when I busted open those pods, I’d also let out the aerosolized blood. The entire room stank of it, and all these vampires were breathing it in like a cloud of nitrous oxide.
Cami was the first to strike. As I stood there, dumbfounded by the pure hell I’d unleashed by breaking those pods, she sucked in the vaporized blood drug and her face contorted into a look of pure animalistic hatred. Beneath the raging eyes and bared fangs, I recognized a bit of Sofi. And I’m sure that if I had known her earlier—had been able to save her in time—she’d have been just as much a wonderful person as I’d discovered Sofi to be.
In a blaze of movement, she rushed at me, almost as if she were floating across the floor. I dove left, barely avoiding impact, and caught my pants on a shard of broken glass from one of the shattered pods. Blood began to pour freely from the open wound on my knee, and the room full of recently-released vampires sniffed the air in unison, converging their focus on one single thing: a fresh meal called Phoenix.
I stumbled to my feet and returned my eyes to Cami. She’d moved faster than any vampire I’d ever seen before, and I feared her next move would be unavoidable. Her wild eyes flickered in the red fog of the room, darting frenetically this way and that. Finally, they locked onto mine, and as her lips turned up in a horrible grin, Nancy attacked me from the left.
She hit me with the force of a semi-truck and would have sent me flying across the room and into a wall if she hadn’t wrapped her arms around me as she attacked. We tumbled to the ground and shards of glass tore through my clothes as we rolled, dotting my body with pricks and cuts like I’d become a human pincushion. As we came to a stop against the base of one of the broken pods, her lips peeled back, and she began to snap her virgin fangs at my neck. I reached out with my right hand and shoved it against her jaw as I searched for an exit.
Vampire surrounded me. Dozens of them. Possibly hundreds. All of them wild and feral from the vapor they breathed and all with a hunger unlike I’d ever seen. At that moment, I accepted my fate. No amount of skills or training could take out a drugged-out army like this. With one hand pressed firmly against Nancy’s snapping jaws, I focused my energy inward and counted down from ten.
Then I did what I always hated to do. What hurt like hell and tore me apart, but as they say, desperate times. Time slowed as I counted, and the cacophony of screams, alarms, and screeching vampires faded. An inner heat began to swell in my solar plexus until it could no longer be contained.
At zero, I exploded into a massive ball of flames, torching myself, Cami, Nancy, and every single last one of those fuckers, into a cloud of dirty ash.
NOW
Chapter Thirty
My name is Phoenix. Phoenix Bones. And I hunt monsters.
Thing is, my name wasn’t supposed to be Phoenix. It was supposed to Charles.
That’s what Mom and Dad called me up until the day I was born. Up until the day I died.
But as I said, I didn’t stay dead. Every time I die, I don’t stay dead. Instead, I come back. I rise. They could have called me Lazarus, I suppose. But although we were in Mississippi, my parents weren’t all that religious. So, they didn’t want to call it a miracle. Instead, it was something magical.
So, in their minds, when I rose up, I rose up like a Phoenix.
This whole spontaneous combustion thing? Just a coincidence. Don’t ask me where it came from. I discovered it by accident, through a series of events I’m too embarrassed to talk about. But how it works? I gave up trying to figure that out a long time ago.
All I know is when I die, I come back. And if I focus all my energy, I can set myself on fire. Then, when it’s all over, I rise from the ashes. Problem is, it wears me the fuck out and hurts like hell.
But that’s what I did that night deep in the earth beneath a Bulgarian cemetery. I’d run out of options.
I don’t know how long I was out, but when I finally came to and clawed my way out of the ash heap, I was naked as a newborn baby, and every last one of the vampires in the room were gone. I kicked around the ash a bit, found my car keys, and backtracked through the facility the way we came until I eventually found the elevator, the hallway, and the entrance back into the crypt.
That’s when I found the straggler. The vampire I offed in the beginning of this story. The one little fucker who took advantage of how weak I was after my pyrotechnics display and almost managed to sink his stanky-ass teeth into me.
Yeah, I killed him. But to tell you the truth, I don’t know why I bothered. This whole thing is just a pile of shit now. And I guess I won. Kind of. But I don’t feel like a winner.
Nancy’s dead.
Cami’s dead.
The farmer’s daughter is dead.
A dozen other girls? Dead.
“Deathbringer,” aka Vampire Dave is still “alive.”
And Sofi’s a vampire.
So, did I win? Or did I lose?
Who the fuck knows.
I’m going to down what’s left of those painkillers, kill myself, and go home.
Chapter Thirty-One
In the three weeks since I overdosed and took the Eitherway Express back home, I must have been called out to old lady Jackson’s house at least a half dozen times. This makes tonight feel like a bad case of déjà vu. Back into the attic which, while no longer the convection oven it had been those few weeks back before the whole vampire debacle, still manages to drive a hefty layer of sweat into my clothes and off my brow.
“This is the last time I’m doing this,” I tell her as I ascend the pull-down staircase into her attic. “You call me out here again, and I’m just gonna drop off a net on your front porch.” I reach the top of the steps and lean over the side, she’s looking back at me with that helpless old lady expression on her face. “Seriously, Ms. Jackson. Call someone to patch up those holes.”
The raccoon’s back again. Same one as always. After about the third visit back here I tagged her, just to be sure. And wouldn’t you know it, that tag is there dangling from her ear. It’s not something I’m supposed to do, but I needed to find out if she had one raccoon hell-bent on making her home in Jackson’s attic, or if there was some queue for raccoons as they waited to move in the second the previous tenant was evicted.
Now that I know the raccoon is the same one as before I at least have options. Could put a bullet in its head. Or tie it up in a sack and toss it in a river. But I’m too damn nice. Can’t hurt a living thing, unless it’s a monster.
Just the thought of offing monsters brings back a mix of emotions. I miss it—the thrill of the hunt. The rush of adrenaline as some evil sonofabitch blows up into a mush of guts as I stab him in his undead heart. And then I remember Sofi, though I try my best not to think of her. Every time I do, all I see are visions of her pale and sweat-soaked face, her eyes wide black saucers and her breath wet and heavy, all while she turns. I regret not taking her and Vampire Dave out when I had the chance. Once those fangs were in … I knew better than to think I could save someone once that happened. And my stupid pride, or chivalry, or just plain chicken-shitted-ness, got the better of me.
God only knows what she’s going t
hrough. God only knows what kind of shit Vampire Dave’s up to now.
I stare into the raccoon’s eyes, and she stares back at me. This is useless.
Back down the stairs, I climb, emptyhanded. Old Lady Jackson’s asking me questions. I don’t hear them. All I hear is the droning echo of that asshole vampire’s laugh, and the constant reminder I’m nothing but a goddamn failure.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Three hours and a half bottle of Jameson later, my new cellphone comes to life with a screeching ring.
“Phoenix here. Who’s this?” I ask as I strain the water from my freshly-boiled macaroni and send it down the kitchen sink drain.
“You damn well know who this is,” comes a gruff reply.
Shit. I probably should have recognized the number, but with caller ID I’ve kind of gotten used to the phone telling me who was on the other line. I still haven’t gotten around to syncing my contacts down to this new one though.
“Asher! Nice to hear from you, man,” I lie. But when the boss calls, sometimes you have to lie. “What’s going on? Heard things are getting crazy downtown with the election coming up.”
“Cut the shit, Bones. I just got off the phone with that Jackson lady. She tells me you refused to do your job.”
“Oh, come on, Asher. I’ve told you about her.” A little bit of milk spills on the counter as I pour it into the pan to make the cheese sauce. Before I wipe it up, Ripley hops onto the counter and licks the milk spot clean. “In fact, I believe I suggested you send someone out from housing to check out her place. See if it’s fit to live in. It’s like she’s running a house for wayward raccoons.”
A pause on the other end of the line, then a low, extended sigh. “Phoenix. When you were out sick those few weeks recently, did I make a fuss? No. I understand. I’m an understanding guy.”
I scoop a few spoons full of my fresh gourmet dinner into my Styrofoam bowl and take a seat at my table. The smell, while normally something that makes my mouth water, does nothing for me. I feel sick to my stomach.
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