Blackout

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Suddenly Laura found herself being yanked forward. She stumbled to the pavement, Danny’s hand no longer on her mouth, his dead breath no longer right in her face. She looked up to see Danny being pulled up and getting punched by a dark blur. Laura couldn’t make out what the figure looked like, except whoever it was had an Afro, wore a big black cape, and moved like Bruce Lee.

  The guy’s moves were amazing. Laura, still prone on the pavement, found herself entranced. First he dodged a punch, grabbed Danny’s wrist as he dodged, and pulled him close enough to elbow Danny in the face. As he stumbled backward, the guy in the cape got Danny in the stomach with the other elbow. Afro-guy was a whirlwind, his cape flapping in the breeze, and Danny couldn’t land a single punch.

  Then Danny got kicked three times in a row, once in the stomach, once in the chest, and once in the head, without Afro-guy once putting his foot down. That kick to the head sent Danny flying back into the garbage cans in front of Laura’s building with a loud clatter. She had gotten a good look at the guy’s feet when he made those kicks, and he was wearing platform shoes.

  When the guy turned to face Jackson, Laura gasped, because it wasn’t a man wearing platforms. The streetlight now showed the face clearly, and that was definitely a chick. It wasn’t a cape, either, it was a leather coat, covering a brown turtleneck (why the hell would anyone wear a turtleneck in July?) and bell-bottoms.

  Laura couldn’t believe it. Outta sight! Where’d a girl learn moves like that? And where do I sign up? Laura had never considered herself a women’s libber, but after the way Freddie and John had treated her, and seeing this girl in action, she was ready to vote yes on the Equal Rights Amendment right here and now.

  Jackson’s face had changed the same way, and now he made a weird snarling noise as he jumped for the girl.

  She jumped out of the way at the last second, blocking the punch with her left arm, then punching him in the stomach, then knocking him down to the pavement with her arms and legs, moving so fast Laura wasn’t even sure how she did it.

  After the girl punched Jackson in the face, Laura heard the metallic rattle of the garbage cans. She was about to shout a warning to the girl, but it turned out not to be necessary. Before Laura even had a chance to open her mouth, the girl had stepped and kicked Danny right back into the cans.

  “You ain’t dustin’ us, bitch!” Jackson said as he got to his feet, blood spilling from a cut on his cheek.

  The girl just smiled.

  Jackson and the girl traded punches, neither one actually landing—no, wait, Jackson got her once, but she just came back with a kick he didn’t see coming. Neither did Laura—that bad coat she was wearing made it hard to see her legs. Laura wondered if that was why she wore it, or if it was just to look supercool. Maybe both.

  Then Danny got up again and jumped her also. Laura was surprised they hadn’t done that sooner—made more sense for two of them to attack than one at a time. The girl managed to hold them both off, but they were starting to push her toward the fence in front of Laura’s building.

  Normally, Laura would have taken this opportunity to run away. She didn’t want to get into a fight, and she tried to stay away from trouble. But there were two problems. One, she had nowhere to run to—they were fighting right in front of her apartment building, and the three of them were between her and the front door. Two, this girl, whoever she was, had just jumped in to help Laura without even knowing who she was, risking her life. Laura had never had a violent thought in her life, but right now, seeing this girl beating up on the two freaks, she suddenly wanted to help the girl out.

  This is nuts, Laura thought as she scrambled over to the garbage cans.

  A voice yelled down from above. “Keep it down, willya? There’s people tryin’a sleep here!”

  Not letting herself think about how stupid this was, Laura grabbed one of the metal lids and hit Danny on the head with it.

  The lid dented, and the vibration shot through her arm so hard she dropped it onto the pavement.

  Danny turned around and snarled at her. “Oh, you’re gonna be sorry you did that, little girl.”

  Sweat poured out of Laura’s forehead. Oh God, all I did was make him mad. What the hell was I thinking?

  Baring his fangs, Danny advanced on Laura. She couldn’t make herself move her feet—hell, she couldn’t make herself breathe. Her heart was going a mile a minute. The Son of Sam was gonna kill her. She’d be another victim, just like Donna Lauria and all the others, just some story in the paper. . . .

  But why hasn’t he taken out his gun yet?

  All of a sudden, Danny tensed up, a look of shock on his face. Laura, who couldn’t make her head move and was only looking at Danny’s horrible features, had no idea what had just happened. All she knew was that Danny wasn’t attacking her anymore.

  Then he just started to fall apart—literally. His face started to flake and collapse, his hair and clothes and leather jacket all became a fine powder, and then—

  —then nothing. Just dust on the Waverly Place sidewalk.

  Now the girl was standing in front of Laura, holding a piece of wood in her hand. Behind her, Jackson was on the sidewalk, leaning up against a fire hydrant, shaking his head.

  “Th-thank you,” Laura managed to blurt out. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  The girl just smiled, then turned and ran toward Jackson, the piece of wood raised up. Jackson managed to kick her in the stomach before she could get too close, but then she grabbed his ankle with her left hand and yanked him closer to her, pulling him away from the hydrant, his head hitting the sidewalk with what Laura thought was a pretty hollow crack.

  With her right hand, the girl plunged the piece of wood into Jackson’s chest.

  He turned into dust too.

  It was the freakiest thing Laura had ever seen.

  The girl walked over to Laura, her coat whooshing behind her. She looked like Pam Grier or Tamara Dobson, only cooler. Cleopatra Jones didn’t have a thing on this chick.

  Laura couldn’t believe it. This girl had just been in a major fight, and her makeup wasn’t even mussed. Not even a bruise or nothing. Before he got arrested, Laura’s daddy would hit Laura, and she’d be bloody and bruised all over her face, and her daddy hit her a lot fewer times than this girl got hit by Danny and Jackson.

  As for Laura, her silk dress was ruined, she’d broken three nails, and she had scratches on her arms and legs from when she fell to the pavement. But this girl’s coat wasn’t even out of place.

  Somehow, Laura managed to make her lips move. “What—what were those guys? Not Son of Sam?”

  For the first time, the girl spoke. “No, sugar, they ain’t got nothin’ to do with that cat. Don’t worry, they’re gone and they ain’t never comin’ back, you dig?”

  Given that they’d been turned into dust, Laura could believe that. Now what Jackson had said about her not dusting them made sense. But she still didn’t get it. “Who—who are you?”

  She smiled. “Just call me the Vampire Slayer, baby.”

  Chapter Two

  New York City

  July 6, 1977

  5:35 a.m.

  The sun was just starting to peek over the skyline when Nikki Wood left the apartment on Waverly Place and headed to the West 4th Street station to catch the A train back home. Once the day started, her work was done—vamps didn’t do sunlight, which meant Nikki the Vampire Slayer was free to call it a night.

  It had been a slow night until she found those two creeps attacking that chick on Waverly. Nikki didn’t always stop random muggings—if she started on wholesale crime fighting in this town, it’d become a full-time job, and she already had a mission—but the lack of undead activity meant she was willing to go out of bounds for once and stop some poor girl from getting herself robbed or worse. And then it turned out they were vampires anyhow, so it was all cool.

  Summer was always slower, because of the longer days, though there were other creatures that made u
p for it. Last full moon she’d had to keep an eye on a pack of werewolves that were roaming around Prospect Park in Brooklyn and keep them out of trouble, and then last week there was a weird portal that some kids with a musty old book and too much time on their hands opened in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

  After Nikki dusted those two bloodsuckers, the girl thanked her and told her it would’ve been a crappy ending to a crappy night after what happened with that John turkey at the No-Name Bar, Nikki then felt the need to give a lecture. She hated when Crowley gave lectures like that, but Nikki had learned the hard way to be careful of men who talked a good game in a bar.

  Once she was sure the girl was okay, Nikki took her leave, making sure not to give out a name, even though she was asked. As far as anyone was concerned, she was just the Slayer. If that girl hadn’t been such a mess, or if it hadn’t been so late at night, Nikki wouldn’t have stuck around, but there weren’t any other people in sight—just that one jackass who’d yelled for them to keep it down—and it wasn’t like the fuzz would be any help if she called them. There was no evidence of the attack, so the cops would just think Nikki and the girl were crazy—just like they had when Nikki’s grandmother was killed by a vampire.

  Nikki didn’t have much use for the fuzz.

  So Nikki took care of the girl for a bit before heading home.

  She went down the stairs of the IND train entrance on West 3rd and Sixth. Reaching into her coat, she felt around the change that had collected in the deep pyramid-shaped bottom of the right pocket until she felt a coin with the Y shape carved out of the center. Dropping the token into the slot, she pushed the large wooden turnstile, which rumbled as it rotated to allow her ingress to the subway station. It’d take ages for the A train to show up, but Nikki had been running across rooftops and through side streets on platform shoes all night. She wanted to sit, and being able to do so was worth the wait. Crowley and Robin would likely still be asleep when she got home anyhow.

  Luck, however, was with her tonight—the A showed up as soon as she made it to the platform. Only a few winos and some kids were on the graffiti-covered train, and they gave Nikki a wide berth as she sat in the two-seater by the side door. It was hot as hell on the train, even with all the windows open, but Nikki kept her coat on and didn’t regret the choice of a turtleneck. When you spent your nights hunting bloodsuckers, it was best to keep your neck covered.

  As for the coat—hell, baby, that was her look. You didn’t mess with the look. Besides, she used the coat to cover her moves, like Batman did with his cape in the comics. In fact, that was how she saw herself: as Cleopatra Jones and Batman, all rolled up in one cool package.

  This late, the A train was running local, so it made the full three stops before reaching 42nd Street instead of the two it usually made before pulling into the station below the Port Authority. Her coat sweeping behind her, Nikki ran up the stairs to 42nd Street and the grime of Times Square.

  Halfway down 42nd was the Gem Theater, one of a dozen crappy movie theaters in the square. This one distinguished itself from the others in that it showed old Westerns twenty-four hours a day instead of skin flicks, mainly because Olaf Manguson, the theater’s owner, could get them cheap. The marquee listed two movies: My Darling Clementine and Rio Bravo, which were likely alternating. Olaf never did double features, preferring to charge one admission per film.

  There was a small two-room apartment behind the projection room, which had been given to Nikki to live in rent-free ever since she saved the life of Olaf’s nephew A.J., the theater’s manager, by dusting a vampire three and a half years ago.

  Marty, the insomniac old man who had the overnight shift in the ticket booth, greeted her as she approached the theater entrance. “Mornin’, Nikki. Kill any Commies?”

  Nikki smiled. “Not tonight, Marty. Just a coupla vampires.”

  “Dang. Need to get ridda Commies. S’what we did back in double-ya double-ya two, y’know.” Marty frowned. “Wait, that was the Nazis. Korea was the Commies.” Marty had served two tours in the U.S. Marines. He kept his old service revolver handy in the ticket booth, which had been a surprise to many a would-be late-night robber who thought the old man would be easy pickings.

  “That ain’t the job, sugar. Job’s killin’ vampires.” Marty had been present when Nikki staked the vampire whose death led to her place of residence—and had been frustrated by the uselessness of his revolver against the creature determined to suck A.J.’s blood. It also meant he knew exactly how Nikki spent her nights.

  Marty looked thoughtful. “Maybe you could kill vampire Commies?”

  “I’ll work on it, Marty,” Nikki said with a laugh as she went into the theater. A.J. Manguson, tall and skinny with long, straight blond hair, was behind the popcorn counter, trying to keep himself awake. Nikki was surprised to see him standing there, since Leo usually took the overnight at the popcorn counter while A.J. slept. “What’s happenin’, Ayj? Where’s Leo?”

  “His wife’s sick, so he’s gotta take the kids to school this morning. I let him go early.”

  Nikki nodded. “Quiet night?”

  “Yeah, just the usual loonies who can’t live without a John Wayne flick at four in the morning. So you catch the Son of Sam yet?”

  Laughing, Nikki shook her head. “I’m the Vampire Slayer, Ayj. I got a mission, and it don’t mean stoppin’ no freaks.” She realized what she’d said and added quickly, “Not those kinda freaks, anyhow. Let the fuzz handle that.”

  A.J. snorted. “Yeah, ’cause they’re doing such a good job right now. Been almost a year, and they haven’t got a clue.”

  She moved toward the back staircase that led to the projection room and her pad. “Well, I’m done for the night, sugar. Gonna catch me some z’s.”

  “Right on, Nik. G’night.”

  Slowly Nikki trudged up the narrow, uneven staircase, the warped old wood creaking each time her platforms came down on them.

  At the top of the landing was a narrow hallway, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The first of the hallway’s two doors led to the projection room, and the muffled sounds of John Wayne’s distinctive voice wafted through the door. That meant Rio Bravo was showing, since the Duke wasn’t in My Darling Clementine. Not that Nikki gave a damn about Westerns—they were always just about white folks shooting other white folks—but it was impossible to live here without picking up on this stuff.

  Nikki reached into her coat’s left pocket and pulled out her keys, inserting the proper one into the lock above the knob on the second door on the left.

  “Ah, you’re back.”

  “You’re up early,” Nikki said as she walked through the door. She had hoped Crowley would be asleep on the couch, but he was standing in the kitchenette that took up one wall of the living room, sipping tea from one of Nikki’s mugs. The couch hadn’t even been opened—when it was, it went from being a living room to a bedroom. The apartment’s other room was Robin’s.

  Bernard Crowley was almost circular. His head was round, with only a thatch of blond hair at the back, the rest having long since fallen out; his cheeks were as chubby as her four-year-old’s were when he was born. He had a bit of a potbelly and pasty white skin, all of which made him seem fairly harmless—and this image was not helped by his scratchy voice and British accent. Nikki, though, knew that he was a black belt in karate in addition to being incredibly brilliant.

  Of course, he had to be brilliant in order to do his job. He was her Watcher, her mentor, the man who’d found her four years ago and told her that she was the Slayer. If only he’d found me in time to save Gramma. Or before I met—

  She cut the thought off, as she always did whenever she thought about Robin’s father.

  The air was stuffy in the room, despite the fan blowing on high in the window that looked out over the bright lights of 42nd Street. The inside of the movie theater itself was air-conditioned, and there were times when Nikki took advantage of its proximity to cool of
f, but there was only so much Western she could take, so she mostly just lived with the fan.

  Crowley ran his hand over his bald head. “Haven’t been to sleep yet, I’m afraid. How did it go this evening?”

  “Went fine,” Nikki said with a grin as she shrugged out of her coat, tossing it onto the battered old easy chair she’d pulled off the street years ago. “Staked two vamps, saved a girl.” Nikki sat down on her grandmother’s rocking chair and unlaced her platforms. “How’s Robin?”

  Crowley sat his rotund form on the couch perpendicular to Nikki and pulled a cigarette out of a case in his shirt pocket. “Resting comfortably, thank you, which is nothing short of miraculous given the cinematic balderdash bleeding through the walls. I suspect if the Soviets ever do drop the bomb, Robin will sleep through it.”

  “Good. Thanks for keeping an eye on him.” Nikki wiggled her toes, free of the footwear.

  “My pleasure, of course. Still—” Crowley hesitated, lit his cigarette, took a puff on it, then exhaled the smoke. “I would like to, for the seven hundredth time, remind you that I have a very spacious flat on Central Park West—one I never see, by the way, what with taking care of Robin while you’re patrolling—and I’d be happy to—”

  “No.” Nikki leaned forward in the rocking chair, the curved wood creaking on the linoleum floor. “I told you, I ain’t livin’ in no honkytown. I gotta be the Slayer, that’s cool, but I’m gonna be the Slayer for my people.”

  “All right.” Crowley took another sip of tea, which he usually did when he wanted to hide his annoyance. Nikki always thought that was a stupid habit, since all it did was shine a big spotlight on his annoyance. But she didn’t care. They’d been having this argument for four years, and they’d probably have it for another four years. The fact was, vamps preyed on the weak and disenfranchised, and in this town, that meant minorities. Besides, Nikki wasn’t about to abandon her people. Folks up on the Upper West Side had money and being white on their side; in Hell’s Kitchen and Times Square and up in Harlem, they didn’t have jack.