“They usually are. I don’t suppose you caught any of the vampires’ names during the fight? Even a description of one or two of the bloodsuckers might help. I have a database here of all known supernatural creatures, dead or alive, that we’ve ever encountered or heard about. Been working on it for years. Might turn something up, let us know who we’re dealing with.”
“That I can do,” I said. “The head guy is a tall long-haired dude. Imagine if Fabio, in his prime, was doing a Walker, Texas Ranger impression. He must have been old—really old. He was crazy fast, and he hoisted John up like he was nothing. I’ve never seen anyone that powerful.”
“Of course you haven’t. Y’all had been hunting newborns, not real vampires. The ones you were dealing with weren’t even properly turned. They were left to go feral.”
I nodded. It was true; the ones in Texas had all been new, but not the ones I met out in California. Those weren’t new, and my gut told me Christian was even more powerful than they were. I decided against telling Jacob about them. I wasn’t sure how it would go down, the fact that I had formed a temporary alliance with vampires and werewolves to destroy his urn. I doubted he would buy the whole ends-justify-the-means thing.
“He and Robert knew each other,” I added.
“I figured as much, seeing as he had a hard-on for Robert. Must have been someone we crossed way back when. Don’t suppose you caught this old vamp’s name?”
“I did. It’s Christian.”
“Christian? Are you sure?” Jacob’s face distorted into shock, and I was worried he might have a coronary on the spot. It was the second such look he’d given me tonight. The first was when I told him Robert was dead, and now when I told him Christian was alive.
“I’m positive. Why?”
“He’s supposed to be dead.”
“Well, as they say, word of his passing was greatly exaggerated. Who is he?”
“He’s a total fucking nightmare, pardon my French.”
“Fantastic. So, how and when did he supposedly die?”
“We killed him, about twenty years ago.”
“Oh. Then maybe this is a different Christian?”
“Just how many ancient vampires do you think are running around with a name like Christian? It’s like Chance. Most people don’t go giving their kids those types of names.”
“Thanks. And, before you ask, it involved my mom, a one-night stand, and Vegas. Guess she thought it was funny.” I was used to people giving me a hard time about my name, but it was still annoying.
“Well, be thankful it’s not Sue.” Jacob’s pained look softened a little as he chuckled at his own joke.
I had heard that one before, too. “Let’s focus on Christian right now. What can you tell me about him, Jacob? I don’t suppose he’s part of the whole government conspiracy thing?”
“Are you crazy? Of course not! He’s bad news. Old and powerful. If I’d known he was still alive, I wouldn’t have slept so well all these years.”
With all of his hang-ups, I doubted Robert ever slept well. “All right; so who is he?”
“No time for that now; if Christian’s alive, he won’t stop with Robert—he’ll be out for blood. Our blood. I’ve got to warn them.”
“Your old crew?” I asked I let the obvious joke—about vampires being out for blood—pass.
Jacob nodded, got an old leather address book out of the top drawer of his desk, and started flipping through it.
“So who else did you and Robert hunt with back then? I don’t think it was just anyone who gave him that tip; Richard seemed pretty certain about it after receiving the phone call.”
Jacob looked up from his book to speak to me. “I see where you’re going. I don’t like it, but I see it.” He paused for a moment. “There were seven of us. Jeffrey and Craig died when we went after Christian, Robert’s dead now too, and I’m here with you. That leaves David, Fred, and Paul.”
“So any one of them could have set us up,” I said.
Jacob looked thoughtful then said, “We can kill two birds with one stone. Warn the guys Christian is alive, and find out if any of them told Robert about the ranch. I can’t see how they would betray him like that, seeing as Christian would want the rest of us as dead as Robert.”
“Maybe they had no choice? Christian is a vampire; he could have made them do it.”
“Could be. We’ll go ahead and eliminate the least likely first. That would be David. He was a real estate agent. Married, retired, moved to Florida about ten years ago and now captains a party boat out of the Keys. I don’t think it was him.”
Once Jacob found the page he wanted, he rolled to a different computer, logged on, and executed a program. Once that was done, he picked up the receiver of an old, hard-wired phone that sat next to the machine and dialed a number.
“No longer in service,” he said, frowning as he replaced the receiver. He went back to the first computer and started typing. A couple of internet searches later, he pulled up a newspaper article from seven months ago. David and his wife of forty-five years had gone out fishing and never returned. Their boat was found empty, drifting off the Keys.
“And you hadn’t heard about this?” I asked.
“David and I weren’t exactly close. I hadn’t seen the guy in almost twenty years; hadn’t spoken to him since I found out his wife had cancer a year ago.”
“You think it’s coincidence, David going missing right before all this stuff started happening with Christian?” I asked, before remembering who I was talking to.
“There are no such things as coincidences.” He flipped to another number in his book and dialed it. I could see the relief on his face when someone answered.
“Fred! Boy, am I glad to hear your voice. We got problems. Christian’s alive. …Yes, that Christian. He’s the one that killed Richard and wiped out his new crew. Plus, I think he got David.
“How do you know he didn’t get all of Robert’s new crew? Yes, I know he missed one; Chance is right here with me. …What do you mean, not Chance? Who? Robert’s niece? No, Fred, they got her. If she’s alive, then she’s one of them. That’s what I’m saying. No, you’ve got to get out fast! Fred? Fred!”
Jacob was trembling when he hung up the phone. His shoulders slumped as he sat back in his chair and talked to the ceiling.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked, but I had a feeling I knew.
“It looks like we found out what happened to your girlfriend’s sister, Chance. Katy called Fred earlier tonight. Told Fred she was Robert’s niece, that she knew who killed her uncle, and was coming to tell him. Then the line went dead. Looks like we were a few minutes too late.” Jacob fought back tears, and I saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the chair arms.
“Where is Fred now?” I asked.
“That was his home number. He lives north, outside of town, on Pecan Street.”
“Let’s go!” I got up.
“What? Are you nuts? He’s already dead, and if we go, they’ll kill us too. Look, I’m sixty-seven years old, and even back in my prime, I didn’t go out on the jobs. I just found them. Collected the intel. Fighting was never my thing. Odds are Katy won’t be working solo. There will be more of them.”
“Fine; I’ll go myself. What’s the quickest way to get there?” I looked around at the various corridors, unsure of even how to get back to the elevator.
Jacob didn’t want to tell me, but he did anyway. I got the idea that this was a conversation he’d had many times in the distant past. I could imagine Robert and his old buddies razzing him about sitting back in some hideout while everyone else went and did the dangerous stuff.
I didn’t give him shit about it. Instead, I memorized the directions and tried not to think about the last time I rushed into a house full of vampires. The time when I actually had backup.
It was at this point that I realized my car was back at a downtown parking lot. On top of that, all I had on me was my handgun and Robert’s knife. The rest of my gear was sitting on th
e bed back at the hotel.
“I’ll need some weapons, and a car.”
I thought Jacob might argue. Use my lack of gear as an excuse to try again to dissuade me. But he nodded sadly and got up. He shuffled to an old metal cabinet and opened it. Rather than the racks of neatly laid-out weapons I was expecting, it was piled to the top with junk. Jacob motioned to an old army footlocker at the bottom of the heap. I grabbed one side and we tugged. The heavy chest slid out haltingly as everything on it tumbled down around us.
Jacob kicked aside a canteen and I heaved a couple of sleeping bags out of the way. Then Jacob opened the locker—and I was no longer disappointed. Inside were several black canvas gun cases, a couple of crossbows, and a myriad of stakes, vials, and other tools of the monster-slaying trade. I took a couple of stakes, and Jacob picked out one of the black bags and handed it to me. I unzipped it to find a relic.
“Does this thing even work?”
“’Course it works! Why would I keep it around if it didn’t?” Jacob fished out a large metal cylinder from the bag’s front pocket and handed it to me. “Here’s a hundred rounds to go with it.”
I snapped the drum in place below the Thompson sub-machine gun, then tested the hefty weight. I yearned for a mirror to see how much like a gangster I looked.
“I’ll have to take your word for it. The car?”
An apprehensive Jacob nodded and told me to follow him. We rode down in the elevator and went out a small, reinforced door. Behind the building, a chain-link fence topped by rusty razor wire surrounded a parking lot containing two vehicles: a banged-up delivery van with Silver Spur Sewing & Vacuum Repair scrawled on it in faded blue lettering, and an enormous car hidden under an off-white canvas cover.
Jacob nodded at the mountain of canvas, and I pulled off the tarp while Jacob opened the gate. Moments later I cruised out of the lot in a gold ’71 Cadillac convertible.
Chapter 5
I was going to be too late. It didn’t matter that there was no traffic at this time of night, or that I was a roaring moving violation, breaking every speed limit on the way. The fact of the matter was I’d known Fred was dead even before Jacob placed the receiver on its cradle twenty minutes ago. Romping on the 500-cubic-inch engine wasn’t going to change that.
The Pecan Street addresses zoomed by as I sped down the rural road outside northern San Antonio. There were no streetlights, and despite the car’s high beams, I almost missed the house. At the last second, I caught the brass numbers fixed to a crumpled old mailbox that had been used for batting practice more than once.
Applying the brakes with authority, I fishtailed onto the dirt driveway of 2112. The back of the monstrously large Caddy slid sideways towards a withered oak. I spun the wheel furiously, sending the tail careening the other way only inches before it would have slammed into the tree. The car bucked furiously as I fought for control, tearing up the uneven drive toward an ancient white farmhouse.
I could see a soft orange glow pulsing from a second-story window. Unlike modern Texas houses, which were built of stone or brick, this one was all wood. If those were flames, they were going to go through that house like, well, like a house on fire. Then they’d spread to the surrounding woods, which would fare little better than tinder thanks to a hot, dry August.
The house was set back about a hundred yards off the road, which was just long enough for me to stop fishtailing and get control of the land yacht before skidding to a stop between an old black Explorer and an even older blue Chevy pickup parked in front of the house.
I hopped out of the car before it had finished coming to a halt, its bumper stopping a breath away from the wooden porch. I spent the next few precious seconds trying to open the trunk before remembering the car had a different key for the locks than the ignition. I fumbled with the loop of keys before finding the right one. I opened the cavernous trunk and retrieved the Thompson, worked the bolt, and flicked off the safety.
I ran to the house, taking the porch stairs in one leap. The front door was open, and I bulled right through it and across a small foyer to the stairs, which I began climbing two at a time. I ignored the first floor entirely. That was my first mistake.
Now that I was in the house, I knew that the glow I had seen in the second-story window was definitely flames. Initially the smoke wasn’t bad, but it got thicker the farther I ascended the steps, and by the time I made it to the second-story landing, it was hovering a few feet below the ceiling in a dark mass. Not bothering to take the time to put a wet cloth over my nose and mouth was mistake number two.
Taking less than a second to get my bearings, I bent low and hurried toward the side of the house that was burning. I figured, dead or alive, that was where Fred would be. That was my final mistake. You would think I’d have learned something after what happened the last time I barreled into a house with reported vampire activity.
Despite the heat of a raging fire on a hot summer night, I felt a chill coming from behind me and realized too late the sum of my errors. I had rushed in assuming that both of the vehicles in the front yard belonged to Fred, and that the vampires were long gone. Now I was trapped between a fire and a cold-blooded killer. To make matters worse, a fight meant I was going to start breathing hard, and a lot of that smoke and carbon dioxide was going to make its way into my lungs. I wouldn’t last long.
I spun back toward the stairs, hoping I could make it there in time. I managed two steps before I was forced to bring my gun up and catch the oncoming vamp with a burst of lead. Startled by the roar of gunfire, the creature veered left, managing to avoid some of the rounds. Thankfully, its trajectory shift also caused its outstretched claws to narrowly miss my face.
I leaped to the side, plastering myself against the wall as it passed. Momentum was keeping it going, despite a hand it lashed out to rake against the wall in an attempt to slow itself down.
Based on previous experience, I assumed it wouldn’t be alone, and between my less-than-stealthy entrance and the thunder of the sub-machine gun, anything else hiding in the house knew where I was.
At least now I had a free path to the staircase. I backpedaled toward it, putting distance between myself and the vampire. I tried to keep the Thompson’s muzzle tracking the vampire, but it was a study in speed.
The frenzied vamp finally came to a stop and extracted its arm from the two-foot-long channel it had torn through the drywall. A strip of flowered wallpaper hung from its taloned hand. Before it could turn, I squeezed the trigger, keeping it depressed for a couple of seconds. A few dozen holes erupted from the thing as it spun, trying to reorient itself on me.
While it readied its next charge, I caught a decent gander at it. His countenance was feral, with eyes so bloodshot they looked like giant red orbs. He was newly made, not one of the ones that ambushed me last time I was in Texas. He was tall despite being hunched over—well over six feet, clean cut, mid-twenties; though, with vampires, age was meaningless. He was a pretty-boy, his bullet-riddled designer clothing more suited for clubbing than murder and arson. Of course, that tracked with some other vampires I knew. They tended to overdress.
When he lunged, I let loose another burst, sweeping the fire down toward his legs. Half of the Thompson’s drum was expended before the bullets won out. The slugs had shattered the vampire’s knees and shins, pitching it forward. The focused onslaught became a crashing roll. With a flash of Donkey Kong nostalgia, I leaped, then reached into my jacket pocket to pull out a sharpened stake. I coughed once, stumbling sideways. I had just moved in to finish him when my peripheral vision caught motion.
I stopped, making sure to keep my distance from the twitching mess on the floor, which I realized was once again between me and the stairs. I brought the gun toward the newcomer.
Smoke followed the young blonde out of a doorway down the hall, and I surmised that she must have been in the room I had seen burning from outside—the one that I had assumed Fred was in.
Her lithe figure was clad in a p
air of jean shorts and a once-white cropped t-shirt that was now discolored by grime and gore. She was covered in so much blood it was impossible to tell which was hers. Blood splattered her bare limbs, covered her mouth, and ran down her chin to soak the front of her shirt. She was bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds, including a tight group of three in her chest. In her hand was a fire axe, its head thick with viscera.
“Chance!” She smiled, causing me to take an involuntary step back. I half jumped, half tripped over the vampire on the floor. Fortunately, it was too busy writhing in agony to grab me.
My dead girlfriend’s sister advanced as I withdrew. I felt my left heel encounter air as it hovered above the top of the stairs.
“Katy?” I coughed as soon as I said it. The smoke was beginning to take its toll.
“You finally came back for me! You know, I had almost given up on you. When I woke up at the ranch and realized that everyone was dead but you, I knew you’d come for me. I thought to myself: Chance will rescue me. He’ll do the right thing. He’d never leave me to die, not after what he let happen to Kristi.
“All during that first day, while they laughed and drank from me, I told myself you’d come. Even that evening, after they murdered the family and brought me somewhere else, I was sure you’d rescue me. My knight in shining armor.” Her smile reminded me of the old Katy, the popular high school kid who might have had a little crush on her older sister’s boyfriend. Then her smile changed into something dark.
“I have to be honest, though. By the second day I was starting to have my doubts. My faith was crumbling, you know? By the third day, when Christian finished turning me, I think that’s when I finally gave up hope.
“Then the fourth day rolled around, or maybe it was even the fifth... for a while it was a blur. But at some point, I became what you see here, and the whole world looked different. Oh, Chance, you can’t imagine how wonderful it was! It even made me forget about you for a while. But now here you are! I have to tell you, though: I think you’re too late. You know, to save me. What do you think?”
Texas Hold 'Em Page 5
