I was pondering how to respond to the axe-wielding lunatic when I coughed again. The spasm bent me forward, and I noticed that the vamp with the shattered legs had recovered enough to begin slowly clawing his way toward me.
Katy noticed him too, taking his head off with a sudden vicious strike of her axe. Her preternatural strength sent the bit cleanly though the thing’s neck and several inches into the hardwood floor. She pulled it out with a flick of her wrist.
“He was an asshole. Still, Christian says we’re not supposed to kill our kind. Our kind. I never thought I’d say that when talking about vampires. Funny, huh? And then there are all these rules! Who would have thought, right? Hope you don’t mind if I blame it on you?” She kicked the head and watched it roll, teeter on the brink of the stairs, then slowly tumble over the edge.
“Go ahead.” It was getting increasingly hard to breathe; I stifled a cough while trying not to listen to the soft wet thuds as the head made its leisurely way down the staircase.
“No loss. He was new. Christian finished making him last night. It wasn’t taking well; he was out of control. Did you know that there’s a right way and a wrong way to make vampires? Who would have thought, right? And some never quite make it, while others are, well…” She gave me a grin and shrugged. “…naturals.”
“Katy, where is Fred?”
“The old man? He went to pieces in the other room.” Her toothy smile at her own sick joke made my stomach turn.
For once I was at a loss for words. Katy had become a little unhinged after her sister’s death six months ago, and now the hinges were completely gone. My mind was trying to reconcile the thing before me with the girl I’d known a few short weeks ago. She had been the one that started us hunting vampires in the first place, pulling Robert out of retirement and getting me in on it. Now she’d chopped up a guy and set fire to his house. I didn’t know where to begin trying to come to grips with it all.
“Don’t look so glum, Chance. The two of us are back together! That’s all that matters, right?”
Before I could formulate a reply, another vampire came out of a room at the far end of the hall. This one looked like she could have been a thirty-something-year-old schoolmarm when she was turned. I’m talking the schoolboy-fantasy teacher, complete with scarf, cashmere sweater, and pencil skirt wrapped tightly around an hourglass figure. She seemed unconcerned with the smoke that billowed around her as she flipped through an address book. Her aura was strong. Nowhere near Christian’s, but troubling nonetheless.
“What’s going on out here? You guys were supposed to make this look like an accident, not a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And what’s with the gunfire? Can’t you handle a couple of senior citizens? Now stop screwing around and start searching, we’re supposed to be looking for—” She stopped when she finally glanced up and saw me. She must have assumed the source of the gunfire was dead, and that Katy had been talking to Old Headless.
“The old man resisted. I didn’t have a choice,” said Katy, pointing to the holes in her chest. Her tone was snarky. She was obviously annoyed at the schoolmarm for interrupting us. “But I think Christian will get over it once I bring him Chance here, don’t you think? This is the last of Robert’s new hunters. That just leaves what-his-name—Josh? Jacob? And then we’re done, and I can finally start enjoying myself!”
“What happened to Clarence?” The schoolmarm was seething as she looked down at the headless vamp.
“Chance killed him,” Katy said with an innocent smile she had practiced on her parents for years.
She wasn’t buying it. “With your axe? Or would you have me believe he cut his head off with a gun?”
“The dude’s name was Clarence?” I couldn’t help myself; it slipped out.
Katy shrugged, answering both questions with a single gesture.
“And yours, apparently, is Chance—don’t judge, dear,” said the schoolmarm, looking back and forth between Katy and me, her shock at seeing me rapidly overshadowed by her fury at what she saw as a bungling of Fred’s murder. Reaching an internal decision, she closed the book she was holding and tossed it to Katy, who snapped it out of the air and slid it into her back pocket.
The schoolmarm at least had the decency to flash me a forced smile before trying to kill me.
She was a blur, moving so suddenly that even Katy was taken off guard. I stood frozen. The appearance and transformation of Katy, the oncoming vampire, and the inhaling of carbon dioxide was too much.
By the time I recovered enough to fire my gun, the schoolmarm was on me, sending us both tumbling back down the stairs in a tangle of groaning (me) and snarling (her) limbs, teeth, and gunshots.
I still held the stake I was going to use on Headless in my off hand, leaving me with a one-handed grip on the out-of-control submachine gun that sent shots everywhere but into the vampire.
Fortunately, countless hours of judo training paid off, and I was able to roll down the stairs more or less in one piece. She did the same, mostly because vampires were immune to bumps and bruises. On a positive note, apparently it’s hard to maintain propriety when tumbling down a staircase in a tight wool skirt, so I at least won on form—especially when I managed to land a kick to her midsection right after we hit the foyer floor. She might have been supernaturally strong, but she weighed less than 120 pounds and couldn’t deny physics. The kick caused her to tumble straight out the front door.
Dizzy from both the fall and the lack of oxygen, I got up and stumbled toward the door, preparing to close it on her. Not that it would do much good. Katy must have brainwashed Fred or one of his family into inviting the rest in. Vampires couldn’t enter someone’s house unless they were invited in. It was some strange law that governed them. Unfortunately, they tended to cheat to get around it.
The Thompson was empty, so when a newcomer entered the foyer from the living room, I slammed the door, dropped the submachine gun and drew my Kimber automatic out of its shoulder holster, snapping off two shots at the latest vampire.
Both rounds managed to catch him in the head, leaving a pair of .45- caliber craters in his skull. We both blinked: him from the lead in his head, and me stunned by my lucky shots.
I was about to use the stake on the incapacitated vampire when a crash came from behind me. The door blew open and a weight hit me from behind, heaving me forward in a desperate bid to remain upright. Pain coursed through me as teeth sank into the back of my neck. The schoolmarm held on, her arms around me, razor-sharp nails digging channels into my chest.
I leaned forward, reached behind my shoulder to grab a fistful of cashmere sweater, and executed a throw. She sailed over me, met by the remaining contents of the Kimber’s magazine which I emptied into her as she landed.
The guy with the holes in his head regained his bearings and launched himself at me. Out of ammo, I punched out with my gun hand. The nose of the .45 slammed into his face, its white-hot muzzle plunging into an eye.
Screaming like a little girl, he batted my arm away, causing me to release the firearm. The gun fell out of his oozing eye socket to clatter on the floor.
The good news was that the smoke was nowhere near as bad on the first floor of the house, and I was able to suck in lungfuls of good air as I shook some sense back into my arm. The bad news was that I was running out of weapons and options.
Between the two bullet holes and the smoking crater of his eye socket, the vamp was pissed off. He came at me again as I dropped into a fighting stance, wondering where Katy had gone in all this. I got my answer when an axe haft appeared before me. I turned to see her standing at the base of the stairs, one hand resting in her front pocket, the other holding out her fire axe to me grip first.
“Batter up!”
I grabbed it and, taking her advice, swung home-run style at the oncoming vampire. The blow caught him full in the middle. He buckled as the axe head plunged into him. I wrenched it out and prepared to bring it down on the back of his neck. But the schoolma
rm was an old one, and with vampires, old meant tough. Despite the five or so rounds I’d put in her, she was already in flight, robbing me of the killing blow.
I was forced to bring the axe up horizontally to intercept her. Falling backward as she hit me, I positioned myself for another throw, attempting to use her momentum to hurl her. It worked—for the most part. I went down, using my legs to lift her up and behind me. She should have been flung several feet, leaving her slightly disoriented and me with time to ready the axe.
If she had been human, that was how it would have gone, but she wasn’t. She was fast, and having just experienced a similar move, she expected it.
Instead, she shot out a hand, crushing my calf in her grip as each of her nails buried themselves a half inch into my leg. I felt a tug, then searing pain as she used me to stop her momentum. I unintentionally completed a backward somersault as her nails tore through my muscle, pulling me over to land face first on the floor.
We both slid a foot or two before coming to a stop. The next agony was more of a fiery kind when her teeth sunk into my leg, rending away the muscle. She shot a hand up to grab my thigh and pulled herself up toward more precious bits. I felt like a drumstick under siege by a rabid animal.
I let go of the axe, pulled out my KA-BAR, and with a backward stroke buried it up to the hilt in her back, angling for her heart. The knife wasn’t wood, so it wouldn’t incapacitate her if I pierced it, but when I twisted the six-inch blade as hard as I could, it sure got her attention.
She sprung backwards like a startled cat, taking the knife with her. She landed in a crouch, her eyes burrowing into me as she spat out a bloody chunk of my leg. I was half disgusted, and half happy she hadn’t swallowed it. She grabbed the knife out of her back and tossed it aside. I spent those precious few seconds scooping up the axe and regaining my footing.
My situation was precarious at best. My injured leg couldn’t support any weight, so I balanced on my good one, hefting the axe. I tried to gauge whether I could swing it without falling over.
“Look, guys, watching you two go at it is fun and all, but the fire’s spreading, and we gotta go.”
I turned at Katy’s voice, not registering her fist lashing toward my face. I saw white light when the impact hit my temple, then nothing.
Chapter 6
It wasn’t the first time I’d thought I had died. I wondered why death always hurt so much. Shouldn’t the pain have gone away? And why was I sitting? I thought floating—upward, preferably—would have been more appropriate.
But there was no bright light to head toward. In fact, it was rather dark. It occurred to me then that my eyes were shut. I opened them. There was the bright light! But it was too bright, so I closed them again.
Giving up on sight for the time being, I tried instead to move toward the light, but found my wrists and ankles were secured somehow. All I could do was squirm, which didn’t accomplish anything besides making me hurt more. Death was overrated.
My neck hurt even worse than my chest, and they were both overshadowed by the agony in my leg and throbbing in my head. Keeping my eyes shut wasn’t doing anything for the pain, so I willed them open. The light forced me to look down at my blood-soaked shirt for a minute, blinking rapidly until I gradually adjusted to the glare.
Eventually I was able to focus on the source of the illumination through squinted eyes. Alas, no pearly gates gleamed, just a row of spotlights that hung from a bar overhead. Beyond them were aisles of red velvet seats and, above those, a balcony filled with more of the same. Several of the chairs had slashed upholstery and the fabric-lined walls of the room were in tatters. The intact stretches were tagged with a rainbow of profanity and gang signs.
I scanned my immediate area and came to understand that I was, in fact, not dead. Instead I was alive and duct-taped to a wooden chair placed in the center stage of a small theater. I coughed. It was a painful experience; the only upside was that it confirmed I wasn’t gagged.
A clapping sound brought my attention to Katy, who was walking down one of the side aisles toward me. I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but it obviously hadn’t been long enough for her to change outfits. She was still wearing the same gore-covered clothes, although she had at least wiped her mouth. Unfortunately, most of the blood had been smeared across the side of her face. The back of her right hand was caked with the rest of it.
“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight! Did you know stars are all I can ever see now? No more sun for me. But of course you know— it’s your fault.” She slowly climbed the stairs to the stage. “So how is our star? Feeling better?” She stopped in front of me, placing her hands on my wrists while she leaned in to examine me.
“Fantastic! Any better and I don’t think I’d be able to stand it. Good thing I’m sitting down.” If it was possible, she had gotten even crazier in the short time I was unconscious.
“That’s the spirit!” Her visceral grin turned my stomach.
“Of course, I’d be feeling a lot better if you would let me go,” I said, looking at my wrists for emphasis.
“C’mon, Chance, how stupid do you think I am? Christian is up in Austin dealing with vampire politics or whatever, but he’ll be here before dawn, and he’s going to be thrilled when he learns what I caught! Do you think I’d risk a surprise like this by giving you an opportunity to escape?” She stood up, thankfully releasing the weight she had been applying to my wrists.
“After I hand you over to him I’ll be zooming up through the ranks. Did you know with vampires, age is kind of a status thing? The older you are, the more powerful, or at least tougher. But Christian tells me I have what it takes to go far, and fast, despite my age. Spunk—that’s what he calls it. What do you think, Chance? Do you think I have what it takes?”
“Well, Katy, you have definitely become more…focused.” When she was alive, before her sister’s death, it had been all popularity and the latest fashions with Katy. Her attention flitted from one fad to the next. She had given new meaning to the term “flighty.”
That changed after Kristi was killed. I had never seemed someone so intent on one thing, and one thing only. Her world was killing vampires. Now it seemed she had aspirations for joining the vampire hierarchy. She had become a butterfly, one insane metamorphosis after another.
“Exactly. I know what I want, and I go out and get it!” She put her arms behind her back and walked out of sight behind me. If she had been holding her axe, I would have thought that decapitation was imminent. Instead, she whispered in my ear. Her cool lips brushed against me and sent goosebumps down my arm.
“Christian wants you dead, you know. But that would be such a waste, don’t you think?” She ran a crusty finger affectionately across my cheek. Her touch ceased when it became clear I wasn’t going to answer her, and she slowly walked around to the front of the chair.
“Well, I think that would be a waste. I’m going to ask him if I can keep you. What do you think of that, Chance? You and me, together forever. You had my sister; now, tell me that you never wanted to try me. After all, everyone always said I was the prettier one.” She finished her loop and straddled my lap. She crossed her wrists behind my neck and moved in close. The smell of rotting meat was sickening.
I did my best not to betray the nauseous feeling she was causing, or the intense pain in my leg. The last thing I needed was to tick her off and stoke the crazy. Trying not to breathe in too deeply, I whispered, “How could I resist?”
She beamed, and then leaned forward to kiss me. Her hands cupped the back of my head, preventing me from pulling back no matter how hard I tried as she kissed me hard and deep. I suppressed a gag at the taste of putrefied blood. When she started grinding against me, I panicked. It might be dangerous to piss her off, but no way was I going where this was headed.
I did what I could to struggle until she pulled away, her hands clamping down on mine, pinning them even more securely to the chair.
“What’s wrong
, Chance? Don’t you want me?” It came out as a growl; her hands began to crush my wrists.
I wanted her about as much as the gaping crater in my leg, but decided to be diplomatic and play the faithful boyfriend card. “Of course! I mean, I always have, but what about Kristi? She was your sister, Katy! I was with her first, and you and I…. Well, it would be wrong. I don’t want to betray her memory.”
“She’s dead, and I’m not. Not really, anyway.”
So much for that angle. I switched gears, trying what I hoped was a sincere-sounding voice.
“True, but it’s not just that. I found someone else. Out in California. And you know me—I’m a one-woman kind of guy.” Okay, so I’ve been juggling two, but telling her that wasn’t going to help me any.
“Oh, yeah? So what’s this new girl’s name?”
“Toni.” I’m not sure why her name jumped to mind. I couldn’t decide if it was because I wanted it to be her, or because I wanted to protect Megan.
“Tony, huh? You batting for the other team now?” When she got up, it was all I could do to suppress a shout as a new wave of agony roared down my leg. Katy reached into her front pocket and fished out a phone. My phone. Shit.
“No, it’s short for Antoinette.”
“Cute. Let’s see if we can find this Toni, shall we? Maybe the two of us can chat. Clear the air. You know, work it out between us girls.”
“Leave her out of this, Katy. She hasn’t done anything.”
“C’mon, Chance, what do you think I am, a monster? I mean, it’s not like I have an axe to grind or anything.” She giggled at her joke as she scrolled through the contact list on my prepaid phone. “Not many numbers here, Chance…. Found it! Toni. No pic, though. Aw, is she fugly?” Katy’s face scrunched with faux pity.
Before I could answer, we were interrupted by the entrance of the schoolmarm and a vamp I recognized from the ambush at the ranch. He was short and stocky, with brown skin despite never seeing the sun, black hair, and a mustache. He wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a John Deere t- shirt. Like some hero from a Western, he was what one would call “weathered-looking.”
Texas Hold 'Em Page 6
