by Matt Kincade
Don Carlos heard the whip of a blade cut through air, its dull chop biting deep into wood. The slump of a relaxing body. The wet trickle of liquid splashing to the dirt floor.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Carmen cringed and opened her eyes. The katana blade had stopped, quivering, an inch from her neck, buried deeply into the hardwood of the casks racked behind her. She looked up. Alex met her eyes and held a finger to his lips. Carmen pulled Alex’s chrome .45 from beneath her shirt, holding it close up against her belly. She met his eyes and nodded. He wrenched the blade from the wood and turned away. Wine trickled from the cut.
The Don stepped forward. The cellar was silent. He smelled blood, heard something dripping. He took another few steps.
Alex came around the corner. Alone. Red liquid dripped from his katana. His face was a mask of grim murder. “Just you’n me now, hoss.”
“Ah, not quite,” said the Don. “There is still the sister. If you—”
“Don’t think so. See, she’s way back there, and I’m right here.” Don Carlos had indeed taken a dozen steps from Mia, who still stood cowering in the corner. “You turn your back on me to get back to her, and I’ll cut you down. Matter of fact, I hope you do. What you was sayin’ about me, that was true. I’m a stone killer. And that girl, she’s just another life. You took a million of ’em. I don’t even know her. I just killed the girl I love—you think that little bird’s life is gonna stop me? If I gotta trade her life for yours, I’ll do it in a hot second. So go on ahead.” He nodded. “You just go on after her.”
Don Carlos smiled, like a man whose chess opponent has shown surprising resourcefulness. “Very well. Then we fight.”
“Yeah, we fight.”
Mia stood there, frozen in terror. Alex yelled at her, “Go on, girl. Get out of here! Go for the sunlight!” She didn’t move.
The vampire drew his sword, swung it experimentally through the air, and saluted in the fencer’s fashion before taking up a fighting stance. Alex held his ground and waited.
The Don’s attack was surgically precise, impossibly fast; perfect technique honed for centuries. Alex parried and blocked desperately, stumbling backward. The vampire wore a confident smirk as he drove Alex mercilessly back.
“You think yourself a swordsman? You are nothing. You are a spoiled American child, playing with a man’s tools.”
A thrust, another, a parry, and a cut. The razor-keen edge of the blade separated Alex’s pant leg, drawing a thin line of blood across his thigh. The Don drove forward again, and Alex jumped away just in time to avoid being impaled on the vampire’s blade.
“Look around you,” said the Don. He gestured towards the rows of wooden casks. “Look upon my work. This is my legacy, my art.” He lunged, forcing Alex back another few steps. “My skill has grown for a dozen lifetimes. No man can do what I do. This is the greatest wine the world has ever known! You would take this gift away from the world, for some petty vendetta? Some self-righteous crusade? For the life of a few peasants, lost in the desert? What could they ever accomplish, in comparison to this? They are the trash of the world.”
Alex stood wearily, and the blade trembled in his hands. “They’re people,” he said. “Maybe they ain’t all great people, hell, maybe some ain’t even good people, but they got hopes and dreams and lives. They deserve better than what you do to ’em.”
“Why do I bother?” Don Carlos rolled his eyes and shook his head sadly. He held his blade at the ready. “How could you, a mere child, ever comprehend what I have done? My works. The things I have accomplished. What I have brought this world. I was a warrior of God, five hundred years before you were even born.” He pushed forward again, and Alex fell back with each attack. “I came to these shores as a stranger in a strange land. I drove the heathens from their temples and smashed their idols. I brought them to Christ at the point of a sword. I marched with Cortés himself. I broke the back of the Aztec Empire!” He beat at Alex’s blade again and again, and the vampire hunter stumbled further back. “I built this country!” Don Carlos snarled, “Me! Before your pathetic Puritan colonies and your Founding Fathers, I was here, bringing civilization to these savages. You Americans are children, playing with your toys in the house that your father built.”
Panting, his sword arm shaking, Alex said, “It’s a house built of bones. And I aim to tear it down.”
The Don paused for a moment. He sneered and ran his tongue over his fangs. “All great works are built of bones,” he said. “And mortared with blood. Soon with your blood.”
Alex retreated again and again, his blocks growing increasingly sloppy and erratic. His arms felt like lead, the shock of each strike traveling up them like a hammer blow. Sweat poured from his face; his side ached. Blood trickled coldly down his leg. His breathing was ragged, his throat raw.
The Don, by comparison, remained composed and upright, his blade at the perfect angle, his left hand raised in a fencer’s posture. He wore a tight smirk as he ground Alex down. He lunged for the kill and Alex rolled away. The sword bit deeply into the stone wall. The Don turned and brought his sword around in time to parry the hunter’s last, desperate blow.
Don Carlos batted Alex’s katana away. The vampire hunter’s sword flew from his hand and across the cellar. The Don grinned wider, displaying his teeth. He centered his sword point in front of Alex’s neck. The hunter retreated before the advancing blade, until his back touched a row of wine casks. Alex swallowed.
“So, cowboy, who’s laughing now?”
Behind him, Carmen rose from the shadows, Alex’s chrome pistol in her hand. She crept forward, silent as a cat, and raised the pistol to the back of the Don’s head.
“I’m still laughing,” said Alex. “On account of you missed one thing.”
Fast as a trick of the light, the Don spun. His blade whipped around, a mercury blur, and took off Carmen’s right hand at the wrist. Her hand, still clutching the pistol, plopped unceremoniously to the dirt. After a shocked moment, blood hosed from her wrist. Mia screamed. The Don spun back toward Alex.
It all happened in a blink. Even Alex didn’t have time to react. One moment Carmen was aiming the pistol; the next she was clutching her bleeding stump, staring at it in mute horror as blood poured onto the ground. Don Carlos’s sword was right back where it had begun, poised in front of Alex’s neck.
“Well, shit,” said Alex.
“I grow bored,” said the Don.
He lowered the blade and stabbed Alex in the stomach. It passed through the Kevlar vest and into his guts like a hot wire through wax. Alex made a shocked gurgling sound as he watched the blade slide in. The point came out through his back and stuck an inch deep into a hardwood cask.
“Fuuuuck…” said Alex.
Carmen screamed and lunged blindly at the Don. He let go of his sword to knock her to the floor. Alex remained pinned to the cask, screaming. Every twitch and breath brought him a new wave of agony.
“You see where your pride, your foolishness get you?” said the Don. He pulled the sword free, and Alex collapsed, gasping, to the floor. Blood pulsed angrily from his stomach. He tried unsuccessfully to hold it in with his hands.
“You didn’t think it would end this way, yes? The hero is supposed to win. So maybe you are not the hero after all.” The Don raised his sword.
He lowered it again. A thoughtful look crossed his face.
“Ah, but we haven’t finished.” He turned to Carmen. “I told you that if you didn’t kill your cowboy, I would drink your sister while you watched.”
“Please don’t,” said Carmen. “I’m begging you. Please.”
In response, the Don approached Mia. The girl trembled but didn’t try to run. The Don gripped her hair with one hand, her shoulder with the other. He turned her so Carmen would have a good view. He opened his mouth and his teeth lowered, closing in on her neck.
From somewhere came the sound of crashing thunder, a flash of lightning. The top half of Don Carlos’s head vap
orized. He jerked as if he’d touched a live wire. His hands fell away from Mia. He took two staggering steps backward and turned toward Alex and Carmen.
Mia stood, Alex’s tiny derringer outstretched in her hand. She gritted her teeth and snarled, opened her eyes, and pulled the trigger again.
The last bullet caught the Don in the throat. The impact knocked him off his feet in a gruesome spray of blood and bone. He lay on the ground, kicking and twitching. He tried to reach his sword, but his hand wouldn’t obey. Carmen, still squeezing her severed arm, kicked the sword away. She let go of her bleeding stump to pick up the sword with her left hand.
The Don’s one remaining eye stared up through a fog of rage. He bared his teeth and hissed. “You cannot kill me, puta morena—”
“Atta girl!” urged Alex.
Don Carlos screamed, “Peasants!”
Carmen swung clean. The Don’s head rolled away. His body flopped and convulsed, bowing and arching its back, making obscene patterns in the bloody mud.
“Jesus Christ,” said Carmen. “My hand.”
Alex, grimacing in pain, uncurled himself enough to look up at her. “Darlin’,” he said, “you’re a vampire. Just stick the damned thing back on.”
Then his world went dark.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The incessant bleating of hospital machinery insinuated itself into Alex’s fevered dreams. He swam up into consciousness. His eyes opened to slits, the room entirely too bright. He smelled hospital smells. Bleach. Disinfectant. Clean cotton sheets. Flowers. Plastics and warm electronics. He raised his arm and found it stuck full of needles and wires and sensors.
“It’s about time,” said a voice.
He turned his head toward the voice. Jen sat backward in a plastic chair, leaning her arms on the backrest. She wore a white tank top that showed off her tattoos. Her hair was cut boyishly short and spiked. An unlit cigarette was tucked behind her ear. “You had us worried there for a few days.”
“I feel like shit,” Alex mumbled.
She smiled mischievously. “Can’t imagine why. Not like you got stabbed in the guts with a sword or anything. But you’ve got enough dope in you right now to get an elephant stoned, so you shouldn’t be feeling much of anything.”
Alex tried to sit up, thought better of it, then laid back down before Jen had to stop him. She used the bed controls to raise him up a bit.
“We got ’im, though,” Alex murmured. “Got that son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, you got him.”
“How’d I get here?”
“Carmen. She called me and told me where you were.”
“Is she—”
“I haven’t seen her. She called from the Mondragon estate but was gone by the time I got there. I got Cooper and some Hell Hunters together, and we found you there. She bandaged you up first, but then she took off.”
“Prob’ly best.”
“Yeah,” said Jen. She put the cigarette in her mouth and had the lighter in her hand, caught herself, then put it back behind her ear. “Probably best.” She was silent for a few moments, staring out the half-open venetian blinds. She looked back at him and grinned. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”
Alex laughed then winced. “Darlin’, you and me both. You’re a doll, Jen.”
Jen reached out and squeezed his hand. “You’re a good man, Alex. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry how this all worked out. You deserve a happy ending.”
Alex’s face darkened. “Ain’t no such thing. Happy endings are for suckers.”
“Yeah.” She sighed and tousled his hair. “By the way, your name right now is John Tyleski. You were injured in a freak farming accident.”
He chuckled. “Always was a mite clumsy with that tiller.”
Jen smiled. “Well, hopefully we can get you out of here in a few days. Can I get you anything in the meantime?”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“If you think of anything, I’ll be around. Cooper is around here somewhere too. He’s going to want to talk to you now that you’re awake. Good seeing you, Alex.”
Jen left. A few minutes later, Cooper entered. He wore a wrinkled tan suit, no tie. He looked strangely naked without his mirrored aviators. He slicked back his nonexistent hair as he entered the room. “Hey, cowboy. Good to see you pulled through.”
“Yeah, you know me. Tougher’n a one-eared alley cat.”
Cooper snorted a laugh. “Yeah, exactly what I was thinking. But anyway, congratulations. This was a hell of a bust.”
“Yeah?”
“That’s right, cowboy. This vamp was a player. He had his finger in every pie along the Mexican border, from San Jose to Corpus Christi. He had enough border-patrol officers in his pocket to field a football team and then another team for them to play against. He was paying off officers to look the other way while he rounded up illegals, and then he’d ship them to vampires across the country. And not just people: drugs, guns, the whole enchilada.”
“So how much of this did y’all know when you gave me the tip ’bout a vampire livin’ out in the desert?”
Cooper shrugged. “Not much. No specifics. We knew there were dirty cops, and we knew there were immigrants disappearing, but we were getting nowhere. We caught one border agent taking bribes, and we leaned on him. He told us about a guy out in the desert who only comes out at night. All I did was hand you a thread. You unraveled the sweater. Just like I knew you would.”
“I’m flattered you got such faith in me. Maybe next time you’ll wanna get stabbed instead of me.”
“Oh, but you’re so much better at it than me,” Cooper said with a laugh. “I’m doing my job; you do yours.”
“And what is your job exactly?”
Cooper smiled. “As I’m sure you’re aware, I’m not at liberty to say. Why don’t we just call it ‘information management’? I get the right information to the right people.”
“Goddamn spook.”
Cooper raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. “Anyway, this was a serious bust. My guys are still sifting through all the intel we found at his place, but we’ve got some very promising leads.”
“How ’bout the money?”
He held up a hand. “I’m getting to that. There’s the usual, of course. Cash, assets, antiques. But it turns out the Don had a taste for art.” Cooper pulled out his phone and brought up a picture. “See that? That’s a painting by Francisco Goya, missing since 1904. Our fence says we’re looking at six or seven million. And that’s just the one painting. We’re still going through it all. Of course we have to split it a few different ways, but we’re looking at a fortune.”
Alex slowly nodded. “Well, I guess that’s somethin’.”
“Well, you have a big hole in your guts, so I wouldn’t expect you to be in a great mood. But just so you know, the bad guy is dead, we have plenty of new leads, and we’re rich. Everything worked out great.”
“Yeah,” said Alex. He turned his head to look out the window. “Just great.” He looked back. “Listen, Coop, I wanna get a little more sleep.”
Cooper turned around, stopped, and turned back again. “Look, for what it’s worth, I never meant for it to turn out this way. The girl was a wild card. Nobody could have predicted it. I’d even prefer you’d finish off the bad guy without getting yourself disemboweled, for once. But we both know this isn’t a glee club. Shit happens. I’m sorry for your loss, but at least you made it. And hell, for that I’m glad. Take care of yourself, pal. I’ll see you around.”
Cooper closed the door on his way out, and Alex was left alone with the aseptic smells of the hospital room and the insistent beep of the monitors.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jen’s van bounced and jostled up Alex’s driveway. In the passenger seat, Alex winced and held his side. “Goddamn, you wanna take it easy?”
“I can’t go any slower,” said Jen. “You’re the one who never wanted to get this road paved.”
“I just got outta the hospital, a
nd you’re tryin’ to kill me.” On the floorboards between his feet lay a black duffel bag containing approximately six million dollars.
“Don’t be such a baby. You’ll be fine.”
The van lumbered around the last curve, and Alex’s little homestead came into view. A familiar yellow muscle car was parked outside.
Alex stared at it for a moment. His pulse quickened. He turned to Jen. “Did you know about this?”
Jen nodded. “Yeah, I knew.”
Alex didn’t say anything. He stayed in his seat.
Jen reached out and squeezed his hand. “Just go on inside, Alex.”
He sighed. “You gonna hang around?”
Jen thought about it for a second. “Nah. I gotta run. Call me, though.”
Alex winced as he climbed down out of the van. He slung the bag of money over his shoulder and shut the door.
“Take care of yourself,” said Jen. “I’ll be around.”
“Sure thing, darlin’.” He raised his hand as the van pulled a wide circle in the driveway and drove off.
The world was suddenly a very quiet place.
The evening sky blazed orange in the west, nearly touching the horizon. The front door had taken on some greater significance, as if it were a portal to another world. Alex stood in the driveway, his hat cocked back on his head, his posture a graceful S curve. He regarded the door.
Finally he came to a decision. The brass doorknob was cool to his touch. It wasn’t locked. He turned the knob, and the door swung open.
Carmen sat on the couch, leaning forward, elbows on her knees. Her black hair fell loose, spilling around her shoulders.
“Hey, Carmen,” he said.
“Hello, Alex.” She rose to her feet.
They stood there like they expected something else to happen.
Carmen broke the silence. “Your plan sucked.”
Alex smiled a little. “Hey, we got him, didn’t we?” He slung the duffel bag down onto the coffee table.
She smiled back. “But you got stabbed, and I got my hand cut off.”
He shrugged. “How’s that hand, by the way?”
