I needed something to keep me occupied so I didn’t backslide into the bottle. This seemed like just the thing, even if it didn’t involve demons. Tomorrow was going to be a brand-new day or whatever kind of self-help crap I could tell myself to keep going.
Giovanni’s came into view, and I slowed the car down to a more reasonable pace. It wouldn’t pay to get there too early. Even Giovanni couldn’t make the pizza cook any faster. Instead of going through the light, I turned left and would head into Giovanni’s from the back entrance. A quick right into the gas station and then I was in the alley leading towards the back of the pizza shack.
Standing right in the center of the alley was a man kissing what looked like the neck of another man. The gay thing didn’t bother me, but their choice of location did. I mean for fuck’s sake, at least take it behind the dumpster or something. Even with my bright lights shining on them, they showed no intention of moving. It was like they didn’t know I had a lady back home waiting for her pizza. Come on guys; get a fucking clue.
One of the men fell to the ground, the collar of his shirt stained crimson. I started to open my door to get out when the other man turned to face me. His mouth was covered in blood, and his teeth were too long by far. All of them ended in sharp points, and I could have sworn there were twice as many as there should have been.
He let out a primal growl and started running towards the car. I sat back and honked the horn hoping I might scare him off like a wild animal. Instead, he just glared at me as he approached.
When he reached the front of the caddie, he slowly ran his fingers against the hood of the car as he made his way towards my door. His nails scraped the car’s hood, leaving gouges and making a noise that sounded worse than my neighbor’s two cats when they were in heat.
“Ah Gideon, any idea what the fuck that thing is?”
It is a vampire.
“Those things are real?”
I thought you were a warrior of God, Bozley Green. Have you truly never dealt with one of the devil’s children?
“I’ve only worked on ridding the world of the demon possessed. This is a little out of my comfort zone. Any fast ideas on how to get it to leave me alone?”
The cross on your neck is a start, but to truly kill a vampire, you must stake it, remove its head, and burn it to ashes.
“Well, I’m all out of stakes and fire at the moment.” I mean seriously Giovanni’s was good, but it’s not tangle with a vampire good.
Then I’d suggest not rolling down your window.
Doesn’t look like that will be my biggest problem, I thought to him.
The vampire stopped by my window and then slowly lowered itself until it was looking directly at me. It hissed, and a black tongue darted in and out of its mouth and around the creature’s teeth. Almost reminded me of how a snake tastes the air while hunting.
One second, the fucking thing was looking at me and the next, my window shattered inwards. Two claw-tipped hands tried to grab me, but I scrambled out of my seat so that he only caught a handful of my shirt.
I was in the clear, at least until it figured out how to open the door. I lunged for the passenger side door and was jerked back towards the window. Gideon surged forward, and I heard my shirt rip as he pulled me to the other side of the car.
The vampire screamed in rage as his meal squirmed out of his grasp. His two meaty hands gripped the door despite the broken glass that was cutting into them. The door creaked as the vampire pulled.
“Oh, come on!” This couldn’t really be happening, could it? All I wanted was a fucking pizza.
The vampire flexed his shoulders and twisted. The door gave one final squeal of protest and then was ripped off the side of the car. He tossed it to the side as if it was nothing and then ducked into the doorway.
Who was going to pay for that, huh? I didn’t think my insurance policy had coverage for supernatural assholes. That left me footing the bill, but if I made it out of this, I swore that he would pay for it with his life. No one and I mean no one, fucked with the caddie.
Two arms grabbed my shoulders and started to drag me forward. The fucking thing’s monstrous tongue darted back and forth faster than before, almost as if it was excited. I did the only thing I could; I grabbed for the cross around my neck.
When my hand finally settled around it I pulled it over my head and shoved it forwards. The vampire screamed, and the grip on my arms disappeared. The smell of burnt flesh filled the car. Tucking the cross back over my head, I pulled myself head first out of the car and then rolled to my feet. I scanned the alley, not seeing anything.
You are safe for now.
“For now?”
It will come for you again. Until you dispatch the creature, no one around you will be safe.
“As if I don’t already have enough to deal with.”
You will also need to dispose of the one it left behind.
“Don’t they need to ingest blood or something to turn?”
It’s always better to be safe where vampires are concerned.
“Just fucking great.”
I hit the button to pop open the trunk and then bent to pick up my ruined door. Who knows, if I was really lucky it could be saved. If not, I was looking at a damn big bill. Sometimes, it felt like I spent my life just fixing things that demons ruined. Normally, it was other people’s stuff, but this hit damn close to home.
I tossed the door in the trunk. David was going to be pissed, but that couldn’t be avoided now.
With the door stowed, I turned towards the body resting in the beams of my headlights. Ugh, this was going to be messy. My shirt was already ripped down the back, so I just stripped it off and put it against the guy’s neck. No reason to get covered in blood if I could help it.
Gideon helped me lift the man and get him in the trunk as quickly as possible. Almost being killed and moving around a corpse had kind of deflated my hunger, but I had promised the lady a pizza, and by God, she was going to get one.
The sign on the back door of Giovanni’s read “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” Well, they were just going to have to deal because my shirt was wrapped around the neck of the dead guy I just stuffed in my trunk. I grabbed forty bucks from my wallet and thought a ten-dollar tip ought to cover the inconvenience of seeing me shirtless.
Giovanni’s bushy eyebrows rose as he watched me over the counter. “Rough night, Mr. Bozley?”
“You could say that.” I was still pissed that Rain had a little nickname for him, and really I wanted to get out of here before anyone else saw me.
Giovanni waited for a moment to see if I would expand on that statement. When I didn’t, he continued speaking. “I’ve got your order right here. That will be forty-two fifty.”
“Seems a little steep for one pizza.”
“Ah, your pal David called and added a few items to the order. We’ve got your pizza, a trifecta calzone, and an order of wings.”
Of course, David had to add a little something for himself. At least he hadn’t ruined it by ordering a salad. I grabbed another twenty from my wallet and handed the cash over to Giovanni. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bozley. You call again real soon.”
I loaded the food in the passenger side of the car. A little smile slid across my face as I slipped into the driver’s side and fastened my belt. David was going to have to earn his meal tonight. I hit the button on the Nav and waited for him to pick up.
“Hope you had enough cash to cover everything.” David almost seemed to be beaming as he spoke into the phone.
“Oh, the cash isn’t the problem. I had a little run in with a vampire on the way.”
“A what?”
“Exactly what I fucking said. Now, I need you to make a fire big enough to burn a body.”
There was a brief pause before he responded with, “Well, at least life around you is never dull.”
I was surprised that David hadn’t even flinched at what I asked him to do. “You’re
taking this better than I expected.”
“Just trying not to ruin the first good lay you’ve had in awhile.”
I smiled as Rain’s voice came across the line. “David!” She laughed, and the sound kept the smile on my face even as the cool wind washed against my skin.
“You’re going to have to pour your own wine now, honey. I’ve got work to do,” David said, and then the line went dead.
The trip home was faster than my drive down, but it felt twice as long. By the time I pulled into the driveway, my teeth were chattering. It wasn’t that cold out, but you add in seventy miles an hour of wind, and it got a good deal colder pretty fast. Rain came down the front stairs, and David poked his head around the side of the house at about the same time.
“What happened to your shirt?” Rain asked, taking the pizza from me and looking over the damage to the car.
“Oh, you know how it is down at Giovanni’s; place is a mad house.” I sent up a small prayer to God when she just shook her head and went back towards the front door with the food.
“If you think I’m waiting for you before I dig in, you’re out of your mind,” she stated.
“I’ll be in soon, I promise.”
“You better be. Pizza makes me tired, and I’ve still got an itch that needs scratching.”
The key fob opened the trunk, and David walked around the corner to greet me. He didn’t say anything as I reached into the trunk and pulled out the dead body. Instead, he just closed the trunk once I had it clear and motioned for me to follow him.
“Looks like the caddie is going to be out of commission for a while,” David said softly trying to get me to open up about what happened.
“Yep.” I didn’t feel like talking about it. The fact that the car had been destroyed again wasn’t sitting all that well with me.
“Vampire attack, you say?” David asked.
That was as close as David was going to come to flat out calling me a liar. I didn’t blame him. I’d been doing this for a long time now and had never even heard a whisper about vampires being real. That didn’t mean too much, I was starting to realize. Either I was living a more sheltered life than I thought, or there was a whole lot more to fighting demons than doing exorcisms.
“Sharp teeth, drinks the blood of its victims, strong as hell. Just ask the caddie about what happened to the door. She’ll tell you all about how the guy ripped it off the car with his bare hands.”
His brows momentarily rose. “Things seem to be changing.”
“Yes, whatever this rising darkness is, it doesn’t pull any punches. I’m guessing by the end of this war, burning a few bodies is going to be the least of our worries.”
David helped me lay the body on top of the pyre he had made. I looked up to see Rain watching from the window. She seemed to have paused mid-bite when she saw the body. Now that piece of pizza was dangling precariously close to the edges of her fingers. Don’t drop the pizza; that’s a party foul.
I guess bringing a dead body home with the pizza wasn’t exactly what she had been expecting.
The body was resting on top of the pyre, but there was something that I still needed to do. I found a branch on the side of the pyre that was about two inches thick. A few quick strokes from my utility knife and it had a sharp point.
Gideon augmented my strength again as I raised the branch over my head and brought it down on the body. A sharp snap sounded as the stake broke through the bone and stabbed into the man’s heart. Something about this didn’t feel quite right, but it had to be done.
Looking over the body, I felt a sense of pity for this man. Was he like me, just going to get a late-night pizza? I kept my eyes fixed on his face. I wanted to remember it. It would drive me in the hunt to find the thing that killed him.
The word tumbled from my mouth in a whisper, “Incendo.” The flames sprang to life at the base of the fire. David and I sat there in silence as we watched the flames rise to consume the body.
“Let’s see if we can’t find you a shirt,” David said, taking me around the shoulders and leading me to the house.
I was about to say I wouldn’t need one when I looked up to see Rain running for the front door. It was kind of a lot to ask, for her to understand this. All the poor lady wanted was some pizza and a little sex, and I brought home a dead body and burned it in the back yard. We were almost at the patio when Rain came around the side of the house. She had a t-shirt in her hand, which took a backseat to the tanned legs I could see poking out of the bottom of the t-shirt she was wearing.
“Thought you could use this,” she said, tossing the shirt to me.
“Thought you were leaving.”
I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind when I saw you torching a body.” She shrugged. “But what can I say, you brought me pizza.”
The tension left my body as I laughed and slipped into the shirt she had given me. I turned towards David. “Let’s get inside and see if there is any pizza left.”
“Hey.” Rain slapped me on the shoulder.
“Oh, good, there is some left.” David and I giggled a little as she hit me again and we made our way inside the house together.
Life had certainly gotten more interesting since I had met this woman. If things kept trending in the direction they were going, our lives were going to stay that way for the foreseeable future. At least this time I had some company.
I had the feeling that would be just enough for me to not give into the darkness. I closed my eyes briefly before entering the house and thought of Gabriella. “This isn’t over yet; it’s only the beginning.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book was my salvation, at least as far as writing goes. I was working on Smuggler’s Legacy the third book in The Galactic Outlaws Series, and I was stuck. Not sure why and it wasn’t exactly writers block, but there was something in the way. It turns out that something was Possessed.
It took me to long to make the call to put down Smuggler’s Legacy and get to work on it but when I finally did, the words came back to me like a long lost friend. It felt good, it felt right, and I was back to normal.
I’m looking forward to getting more books out in the Bozley Green Chronicles later this year, but next up on the list is finishing what I started all those months ago when I put Smuggler’s Legacy down. The good news is it’s more then half way done and it’s a darn god book. So look for it soon.
What does the rest of this year have in store for you? Well, the next thing up on the list is a few books in my collaboration with T S Paul, in his Federal Witch Universe. I’m really excited about the project and we’ve been talking about it all year so it feels good to finally see it coming to fruition.
The end of the year is going to be exciting, I hope all of you will join me for the ride.
ALSO BY BRADFORD BATES
ALSO BY BRADFORD BATES
Ascendancy Legacy
The Arena
Jar of Souls
Guardian of the Grove
Demon Stone
The Rising Darkness
Redemption
Ascendancy Origins
Rise of the Fallen
Butcher of the Bay
Night of the Demon
The Bozley Green Chronicles
Possessed
The Galactic Outlaws
Forced Compliance
Genetic Purge
Smuggler’s Legacy
Fortune Hunters
Star Talon
Lost Signal
A Galactic Outlaws Story
The Marchenko Incident
Smuggler for Hire
Origin Ice
Reapers of Justice
Shadow of the Empire
http://www.bradfordbates.com/books/
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Author’s Note
Also by Bradford Bates
Possessed (Bozley Green Chronicles Book 1) Page 20
