by Rob Cornell
I dipped into my power as I slowly moved my hand toward Mr. Greasy’s foot.
Shock had closed in on me again, making me shiver but numbing the bulk of my pain. It allowed me to focus and wield my magic more quickly. I held my power at the ready, but didn’t unleash it. I had to catch him by surprise. Conjuring a fireball could alert him fast enough to shoot me in the other leg before I could throw my fire.
Mr. Greasy tensed. Either he was about to drop to his knees and start sucking, or shake himself free of the temptation and return his attention to me.
I slid my hand the rest of the way to his foot then grasped his ankle.
He looked down at the sudden contact, furrowing his brow.
I didn’t give him more than a second to puzzle together what was happening. I let my spell loose, lighting my hand like a torch, forcing wave after wave of fire up Mr. Greasy’s leg until the flames took on their own lives and crackled up his clothing.
He screamed and staggered sideways. My grasp on his ankle stole his balance. He toppled to the floor like a flaming sack of rocks. His gun tumbled out of his hand. He lost all sense of me, too busy slapping at the flames burning up his cargo pants and khaki shirt. Then his greasy hair caught fire.
Shock and pain couldn’t keep me from grinning. Mr. Greasy was now Mr. Crispy. He would have made a good date for Ms. Crispy back at The Switch.
These flames alone wouldn’t kill him. While my fireballs carried enough heat to immolate a vamp, all I’d done here was light his clothes on fire. Granted, I had used the magical brand of accelerant, which burned hotter than any standard chemical. Plenty hot enough to hurt him.
He had already started to roll back and forth, though. And the flames had begun to die out.
Calling on a little more power, I heated my hand until it glowed like iron fresh from the forge. Then, without giving myself a chance to hesitate, I clapped my hand over the gunshot wound. I cried out. The pork-like smell of my cooking flesh mingled with the rancid scent of Mr. Greasy’s burning hair.
After my hot hand cauterized the wound, I pushed some more power into my leg to nullify the pain. I couldn’t waste energy healing. Besides, I wanted to get out of there before Mr. Crispy’s buddies arrived.
I couldn’t leave him behind, though. Once he killed all the flames and shook off the pain from his burns, he would come after me again. Maybe even before I had a chance to leave the motel’s parking lot.
I crawled across the floor and picked up a large, pointed shard of wood that had come from the broken door frame. Then I shuffled on my hands and knees to the vamp’s dropped revolver.
By this point, he had suffocated most of the fire. The tattered edges of what remained of his shirt glowed like ash flakes fresh from a bonfire. It was hard to tell his tank top from his blackened flesh. The fire had shorn only half his scalp, which puckered and bubbled. The other half still had hair, and its dark locks hung down his face as he sat up.
His red eyes flared.
I shot him in the face with his gun.
Anyone else, and the round would have punched a hole clear through his head. Vamps were made of tougher meat. Only silver bullets could deliver the damage necessary to kill one.
The force of the shot did cave his face in, though, and dropped him flat.
I scampered across the floor to him and raised the makeshift stake I collected from the debris. Mr. Greasy’s melodramatic entrance had manufactured his own death.
His face already began reconstructing. Unlike damage from burns due to a vampire’s weakness to flame, other wounds seldom lasted long. His crushed features expanded outward, slowly taking their proper shape. The slug popped loose from a hole in his cheek and rolled to the floor.
That’s as far as he got.
I jammed the pointed end of the wooden shard into Mr. Greasy’s heart.
A second later, he was dust.
Chapter Twenty-One
I waited until Sly flipped the sign in the smoke shop’s front window to “Closed” before stumbling out of Fiona’s Malibu and limping to the door.
At my knock, he peered through the glass, gave me one look, and let me in. I nearly tripped on my way through the door. Sly gave me his arm to steady me. “What the hell happened to you?”
Sly’s nephew and employee, Green, stood behind one of the glass cases, gaping at me. His bloodshot eyes suggested he’d been toking on the job again.
“Shot,” I said.
“I can see that. Though it looks like…” He swallowed, looking like he tasted something bitter. “Did you cauterize that yourself, brother?”
“Call me doc.”
Sly waved Green over. “Help me get him in back.”
He sat me in the recliner where Mom took her treatments. After dismissing Green and locking up the shop, Sly got right to work at his table, mixing this and that and whatever. I was too delirious with pain to pay attention.
When he finished, he came at me with a vial of green fluid, a roll of gauze soaked in something that smelled like puke, and a pair of scissors. He cut off my bloody pant leg and dropped it to the floor where it made a wet slap. He wrapped the wound with the gauze. Each layer felt tighter than the last, but he kept on wrapping until I thought I might scream. That done, he handed me the vial.
“Drink.”
I slugged it back. It tasted like mossy tree bark. A warm sleepiness came over me.
I grabbed Sly by the wrist. “I can’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
I started to tell him about what happened to Mom, the ambush at The Switch, and the crazy claim about the Manoogian. While I talked, my limbs turned soft. I felt like I was sinking into the recliner. Every inch of pain dissipated. I also found it harder and harder to work my mouth. By the end of it, I wasn’t sure I was making any sense.
Sly massaged his temples. “Ah, fuck.” He spun on his heel and went back to his workbench.
My eyelids kept drooping, and I kept snapping them wide when I caught myself drifting to sleep. Eventually, I lost the fight. I plunged into sleep.
A blink later, I jerked awake. Something tacky, like syrup, coated my lips. Unlike syrup, it tasted like…I didn’t know what. Something super nasty.
Sly stood over me with another vial in his hand, the inside coated in dirty orange gunk.
I blinked, wiped my lips with the back of my hand. “How long was I out?”
“About thirty seconds.” He waggled the vial. “This stuff makes caffeine look like a sleep aid.”
“It is the most horrible thing I’ve ever tasted.” I touched the stuff that I’d wiped off onto my hand. “And sticky.”
Now that I was awake, some of the pain in my leg woke up, too. I nodded at the bandage. “How long till it heals?”
“Longer than if you just healed it yourself.”
“I can’t. I need all the power I have left if I’m going to get Mom back.”
Sly narrowed his eyes, rubbed the side of his gray-stubbled face. “What are you gonna do, brother? Storm the mayor’s mansion all by yourself?”
I didn’t say anything.
He rolled his eyes and tilted his head back as if begging the gods to hammer some sense into me. “Judith would turn you into a warthog for being this stupid.”
“I’d love to give her the chance.” My ass started going numb in the recliner. I had no idea how Mom had spent so much time in this chair without ending up in traction. When I tried to shift my position, the pain in my leg flared. My stomach turned. I relaxed back into the same position I’d started in. My butt would have to suffer. “I don’t know what this Goulet wants with Mom. It’s a safe bet it isn’t good.”
“Facing off with a vamp that old won’t amount to a hill of beans when he kills you.”
“If—”
“No. When. This guy isn’t like the bounties you gather dust from. A couple flame balls won’t put him down.”
“Every vamp burns,” I said. “Even the old ones.”
“If you can get cl
ose enough, maybe. But if you get that close, it’s already too late.”
I hung my head and sighed. “Thanks for the pep talk, Sly.”
“All I’m saying is, you need a better plan. You need to think things through. What happens if you bust into the Manoogian and Goulet isn’t really there? Then all you’ve done is tag yourself with a B and E.”
“Not really concerned about a criminal record right now.”
He slid a hand over his hair and knocked loose the rubber band on his short ponytail. His salt and pepper locks fell over his ears. If his hair had been whiter, he could have passed as Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He had the same mad-eyed look right then.
“Let me go with you,” he said. “We’ll surveil the place, get a better picture of what we’re dealing with.”
“Sly—”
“Shut it, brother. You can’t go all action hero with your leg like that anyway. You need to give my stuff time to work. We use that time to put together a strategy. A good one.” He grimaced. “At least something better than yours.”
“Sly—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “I know what you’re going to say, and it’s dumb. I’m an adult. Sure as hell have some years on you. I can handle my own fate any way I please. So don’t pull that ‘it’s too dangerous’ shit with me.”
I chuckled. He had me there. “Fine,” I said. “One question.”
He waved his hand in a gesture that said out with it.
“In that little black book from hell you’ve got,” I said, “do you have the number for someone who can hook us up with anti-vamp ordinance?”
He smirked. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
We took Sly’s car, a beat up Chevy Nova that smelled like pot. I knew he partook in the ganja, but I had never seen him so much as roll a joint. I think it was a habit he carried over from when I was a kid, when he wanted to hide his smoky recreation from an impressionable youth. Of course, by the time I had hit middle school, I was onto him.
My leg had started to tingle under the bandage. It didn’t hurt as much, as long as I didn’t move it. I was glad Sly was doing the driving tonight.
Only a mile out from the smoke shop, my phone went off, Fiona’s number on the display.
“Oh, my goddess,” she said when I answered. “You’re okay.”
I looked down at my injured leg. The bandage was covered. Sly had loaned me a pair of his stone washed jeans he had at the shop so I didn’t have to go out in a pair of slacks with one leg cut off. The jeans fit tight on me, but I guess that had been the fashion when stonewashed jeans were still in fashion. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I haven’t heard from you all day.”
“Did you try calling?”
She paused.
I waited.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
My turn to pause. I hadn’t thought much about Mr. Greasy since he shot me. Excruciating pain had, you know, distracted me. Now that I had Fiona on the line, it all came back. And I didn’t know what to make of it.
“Sebastian?”
“I had a visit from the guy who took Mom.”
“What?” Her voice cracked. “Are you okay?”
“He shot me.”
“What?” she asked again.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I dusted him.”
She sighed into the phone. “Thank goodness.”
My stomach tensed. The taste of pepperoni gurgled up the back of my tongue.
Sly must have sensed a change in me. He glanced over, looking worried.
“Didn’t you hear me?” I asked Fiona. “I said I dusted him.”
Silence. Then I heard her throat click as she swallowed.
“How do you know it was the same person?” she finally asked.
“Because he told me.” My shoulders felt heavy, as if gravity had turned against me. “Why did you lie?”
“Lie? About what?”
“You invited him in, Fiona.” The volume and pitch of my voice got away from me. The more I said, the more shrill I became. “You told me you didn’t, but there is no way he could have come into your apartment unless you invited him.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know, Fiona. I don’t know what to think about any of this.”
Sly shot me another look.
Fiona didn’t say anything for a while. I checked the screen on my phone, because I thought the call might have dropped. The timer on the call kept counting. Still connected.
I refused to say more. I wanted an explanation. I would wait until dawn to hear one if I had to.
“I’m sorry,” she said at last.
I felt lightheaded and realized I’d been holding my breath.
“I should have told you from the start. I just…it looks bad.”
“You’re damn right it does.”
She took a deep breath. “I knew him. From before. Way before you and I met.”
A green, acidic sensation filled my gut. I almost told her to stop, I didn’t need to know, didn’t want to know anymore. Knowing a vamp usually meant certain things. Things I couldn’t imagine Fiona taking part in.
“After my mom passed, I had a hard time. Started taking drugs. Started going to clubs. Started going to…their clubs.”
I pressed my lips together to avoid making a sickened groan. This was headed exactly where I was worried it might be.
“I met him… His name’s Krane, like the bird, but with a K. I met him at a party. That’s when I invited him back to my place.”
I pressed a fist against the dashboard as if to brace myself. The cast of headlights from a passing car washed across my face and stunned my eyes. I vaguely remembered my leg was hurting, but I couldn’t feel it anymore. Barely felt anything except that putrid mix in my gut.
“Are you still there?” she asked.
I grunted. It was all I could give her.
“You can probably guess the rest.” I could tell from the strain in her voice she was crying. “It was a onetime thing. I didn’t like how much I liked the way it felt when… After that, I stopped, cold turkey. The clubs, the drugs, the self-pity. Not long after that, I started working at the nursing home. Pulled my life back together. And, eventually, met you.”
That last part—it hurt and relieved me at the same time. Hurt, because I had hoped she would trust me enough to share something like this by now, yet hadn’t. Relieved, because the story ended with us, together, and that clearly meant a lot to her.
“I really wish you had told me this from the start,” I said.
“I wanted to, but I didn’t know how. And when he showed up like that and took Judith, it was like my poor choices had made it happen. Like it was all my fault.”
I inhaled, slowly releasing the tension that had my every nerve pulled tight like a guitar string. I still felt queasy but not poisoned.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. My dry throat made me sound like a bullfrog. “And I doubt it was a coincidence. Somehow, Goulet found out about this Krane vamp and recruited him to his cause. He planned for every contingency, and he’s been ahead of me the whole time.”
“You can’t blame yourself, either,” Fiona said. “Goulet sounds like an extremely powerful vampire. Are you sure you shouldn’t go to the Ministry?”
“No. They won’t act fast enough. Even if they decided not to play politics.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“I love you, Sebastian. I really do.”
This whole thing with Krane still left a bitter taste in my mouth. I wanted to tell her I loved her, too. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“I’ll talk to you soon.”
After I hung up, I looked around. From what I could tell, we were almost to the mansion.
“What was all that about?” Sly asked.
I leaned back and breathed in the car’s baked-in smell of dope. “Not
hing I want to talk about.”
Sly didn’t push.
We were no more than two blocks from the mansion when my phone rang again. Toft this time.
Aw, hell. Not now.
“You are forgetting something,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah. I need the night off.”
“You will find Odi in front of St. John’s Church.”
“A church? Are you trying to torture the kid?”
“He needs to work up his tolerance to religious symbols,” he said. “Get him. Now.”
He hung up before I could get in another word. I thumped my fist against my forehead a few times. “Shit, shit, shit,” I said in time to each thump.
Sly pulled to the curb, turned to me. “What now?”
“Change of plans,” I said. “We need to go over to St. John’s Church.”
“What the hell for?”
Poor Sly. I had already dropped enough on him for one night. I would have rather saved telling him about Odi for another time. “We need to pick up my apprentice.”
His eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. He had pulled his ponytail back in place, but if he hadn’t, his Doc Brown transformation would have been complete. “What in the bluest of blue fucks are you talking about, brother?”
“I’ll explain on the way,” I said. “But you ain’t gonna like it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
As Sly pulled up to St. John’s Church, I saw Odi standing right in front of the structure, his back to the street. He had his shoulders hunched up, hands jammed in his pockets, and he looked like he was shivering. The temp had dropped some, inching toward winter weather instead of fall. Odi wore an insulated flannel shirt, but I knew it wasn’t the cold getting to him.
The church had graced (see what I did there?) Woodward Avenue for over one-hundred fifty years. A Victorian Gothic jewel of Episcopal faith in the center of a city that needed all the faith it could get. An absolute nightmare to your average vampire.
I rolled down the window and leaned out some. My breath turned to a faint cloud in the air. “Odi.”
He jumped and whirled around, face pinched in agony. I knew some vamps responded more to religious symbols than others. I didn’t know if that was a learned thing or just the way some vamps rolled. In either case, Toft was a real asshole for making Odi suffer in front of a damned church in the name of building his tolerance.
