by Rob Cornell
The shriek from its mouth echoed through the dark halls.
Lockman worked a knee between them and shoved the vamp off. He scrambled to his feet and yanked a vial off his bandoleer.
The vamp reared around on all fours and launched itself at Lockman again.
Lockman threw the vial right at its face and spun to the side, out of the vamp’s path.
The vampire squealed and hit the floor, swatting at its smoking face. Rivulets of the holy water split the vamp’s flesh.
Taking advantage of the second he had, Lockman drew one of the wooden stakes and jumped onto the vamp’s back. He lifted the stake over his head, ready to drive it through to its heart.
The vamp bucked and Lockman sailed backward six feet before slamming onto his back. The impact knocked the stake loose. It tocked against the floor and clattered away into the dark.
When the vamp pounced for him again, Lockman rolled out of the way. He drew another stake and swung blind. The pointed end stabbed into the vamp’s neck. Dark blood, almost black, gushed out and ran down the vamp’s naked shoulder.
It grunted, but didn’t scream this time. The wound meant nothing to the vamp. It rose to stand on two feet, yanked the stake free, tossed it into the shadows. The blood pulsed out of the hole for only a second or two more, and then the wound closed like a puckering mouth. The vamp grinned. Its teeth looked like a pair of serrated saws.
Lockman pulled free another vial and chucked it at the vamp.
The vamp easily ducked under the vial, then charged.
Lockman set his legs and held out his hands to meet the vamps attack. When it hit him, he dug his gloved fingers into the wrinkled skin on its chest. The collision drove Lockman back, but he clung to the vamp even when he slammed against the wall and the air exploded out of his lungs.
Face inches from Lockman’s, the vamp opened its mouth wide enough to bite off half of Lockman’s head.
The silver-lined gloves sizzled against the vamp’s skin like a pair of hot irons. Lockman dug his fingers even deeper as the flesh melted under his grip. Then he wedged his foot into the vamp’s belly and kicked out.
The vamp flailed away, leaving Lockman with two crackling chunks of flesh in his gloved hands. He flung the vamp pieces aside and reached back for the crossbow, swung it over his shoulder, and aimed for the vamp’s heart.
Still pawing at its smoldering chest, the vamp didn’t look up until the bolt shot loose from the crossbow. Its yellow eyes widened in the split second before the bolt pierced its chest, square in the heart.
The howl echoed through the darkness. Blood and smoke spewed from the vamp’s gaping mouth. Then its ears and nostrils. The creature dropped to its knees as its chest collapsed like a pierced inflatable mattress.
Lockman eased backward until he stood in the pillar of light cast on the floor from the open window. He kept his headlamp directed at the creature as it melted from the inside out. The white skin blackened. Its head caved in like a rotten Jack-o-Lantern. Finally, it fell to its side and turned into a brackish and steaming lump.
Lockman’s arms felt weak. The crossbow in his hands had somehow gained fifty pounds. He let it drop to the floor. The adrenaline that helped him survive now betrayed him, turning his whole body into a quivering mess of nerves.
Then he heard the shuffling. The rustling. The echoes of movement. All coming from the gymnasium. His battle with the vamp, now a puddle on the floor, had woken the others.
Time to get the fuck out.
He turned and rushed out through the window. The sunlight stung his eyes. He didn’t wait to let them adjust. Squinted and kept moving. Climbed into the car. Took a couple seconds to look back through the board he had broken. No sign of movement, but he knew they were in there. Almost fifty of them. Well dressed. Well rested.
Well organized.
Chapter Twenty-One
He waited for night, and it came too soon.
Lockman parked Vera across the street from the community center under the shadow of a cypress tree. He cracked the window so he could hear. The air outside hung still and wet. It smelled like a storm coming, but the local weather channel hadn’t forecasted any rain.
He cradled his cell phone in one hand, the screen cracked, the number pad crunched and missing keys. It was what broke in his pocket while fighting the nest guard. His only connection back to Kate and Jessie destroyed before he could even use it.
It took a good thirty minutes after dusk had passed for the first vamps to come out the front doors. A trio, two of them fresh turns, the other an original, examined the window Lockman had broken in through. The original grumbled something and all three of them went back inside.
“Permission to speak,” Vera said.
“No.”
“If there really are as many vampires in there as you claimed, is it wise to be so close at night?”
“You’re not very good at listening, are you?”
“I suppose that makes two of us.”
Lockman slid lower in his seat, gaze locked on the community center’s front doors. “I’m hoping to isolate one. For questioning.”
“Are you insane? The odds of capturing a vampire alive by yourself are—”
“Who said anything about ‘by myself?’ You’re going to help.”
The car actually sighed. “I have a feeling this isn’t going to be good for my paint job.”
“It’s your fender you should really worry about.”
“Nice.”
The first trio returned with a replacement board for the window. The fresh turns worked on removing the old wood scraps and hanging the new board while the original watched with arms folded.
Like a supervisor.
Outside of mortal-trained teams, Lockman had seen nothing like it. Vamps giving other vamps orders. His gut tightened. Could all these vamps be under the influence of a powerful mortal? Even someone like Otto Dolan had struggled to keep a small tactical unit on mission. Eventually, their true animal nature took over. Fifty vamps, living together like a miniature community, building instead of destroying. The possibility went against everything Lockman thought he knew about vampires.
Times have changed, LaRue had said.
Talk about a fucking understatement.
While the trio worked on installing a new board, other vamps filed out of the building. Some in small groups. Most in pairs. As casual as humans filing out of a functioning community center after a bake sale or adult education class. From a distance, the fresh ones looked purely mortal. Lockman could pick out the originals and older turns by the way they dressed—wearing hoods or hats and high collars to hide their deformities.
A bunch of vamps going out for a night on the town. Maybe to party in the Quarter. And kidnap more women.
Finally, a male vamp came out solo. He wore a baggy letter jacket and a baseball cap with the brim turned backward. He walked with a jag in his step, shoulders cocked to one side. Mr. Badass Vamp. Obviously a fresh turn. The kid was taking the whole immortal thing way too seriously.
His mistake.
Lockman started Vera’s engine. Even in the night’s silence, it barely made a sound. He pulled a U-turn and cruised in the same direction Badass Vamp traveled.
“What is your strategy?” Vera asked.
“Follow him. Wait for an opening. Hurt him.”
“Hurt him how?”
Lockman ignored her. His window of opportunity wouldn’t last long. If he wanted to pick off this vamp, he would have to do it within the next couple blocks, while they were still among the abandoned and derelict buildings. Any place more populated would make this impossible.
Badass rounded a corner. Lockman fell back a bit before he turned the same corner, and when he came around he saw his opportunity. He slammed on the gas and floored it.
“Headlights.”
Vera turned on her headlights. The beams lit up the vamp.
He turned toward the light, arm raised to block his eyes. Stood right where Lock
man wanted him, in the mouth of an alleyway.
Lockman cut left, then curved right until he drove straight at the vamp, heading into the alley.
Badass worked out what was happening a second too late. He turned to run, but Vera’s front end clipped him at the knees and sent him up onto the hood. Where his bare hands touched Vera’s silver paint job, smoke hissed between his fingers.
“This is your plan?” Vera shouted. The illuminated dashboard brightened for an instant.
Lockman hit the brakes.
The vamp tumbled off the hood and rolled into the alley. The impact did little more than stun him. He shot to his feet as quickly as he hit the ground, shaking off his burnt hands.
Lockman was ready. He floored the gas again. Vera’s engine roared louder than it ever had. How much of that was actually her protesting, Lockman didn’t know. Probably most of it.
Badass tried to scamper out of the way, but his overconfidence dulled his reaction time. Vera hit him again, only this time he didn’t roll up on the hood because Lockman pinched him between the bumper and a metal Dumpster. The twist of metal and the crack of bones echoed in the alley.
The vamp screamed. The sound more human than not. The kid couldn’t have been a vamp for much longer than a month.
Vera’s front end crimped on impact, both fenders flaring out a little. Any other car and the whole front end would have caved.
A spray of blood from the vamp’s mouth painted a line down the center of her hood.
What sounded like a whimper filled the car. Vera.
“Sorry, girl.”
“There had to be a better way to do that,” she said, sounding a little choked up.
“It’s worked for me before.”
“This is something you do often?”
“Just once. A werewolf in Vegas.”
The dash lights flickered then went dim.
Lockman patted the console. “I promise to get you fixed up first chance I have.” He grabbed a stake and climbed out of the car to check on his captive.
Badass must have heard Lockman coming. He threw his head up and hissed, baring his fangs. Tiny little things compared to others Lockman had seen.
“Aren’t you scary,” Lockman said.
On a face that still looked human, this vamp’s expression was priceless. He looked as if Lockman had just told him his pants were down.
Lockman smirked. “Yeah, you’re not the first vamp I’ve seen. Have to admit, I don’t run into too many turns, though. Used to be vamps ate mortals, not played with them.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
Lockman held up the stake and waggled the pointed end. “I’m the guy who’s going to turn you to goo if you don’t answer my questions.”
“You mean turn me to dust?”
“The young are so naive.” Lockman jammed the stake into Badass’s shoulder. Blood gushed around the wood and dribbled onto Vera’s hood.
Badass grimaced, lifted his chin. “Didn’t hurt.”
“I keep this wound open…” He twisted the stake, then jammed it side to side like a joystick. “…you’ll keep bleeding. Enough blood loss is just as dangerous for a vamp as it is a human.”
Badass grabbed Lockman’s wrist and squeezed. “I’ll rip your arm out of your socket.”
Lockman slapped his free gloved hand onto the vamp’s. The silver sizzled against the vamp’s flesh.
Badass shouted and yanked his hand away.
“Your vamp friends obviously didn’t fill you in on the facts of undeath.” Lockman reached up and gave the stake another hard yank.
The vamp grunted, mouth clenched shut to keep in the scream that wanted out.
“First of all, if I stake you, you don’t turn to dust. You melt into a black, steaming puddle. Looks like elephant diarrhea.”
Badass reached up and tried to pull the stake free.
Lockman grabbed the vamp’s hand and burned his skin again. “Leave it alone.”
“You’re making a big mistake.”
“Look, kid. All I want from you is a few questions answered. You cooperate, I’ll put my car in reverse and your legs will heal up just fine. You don’t, I’ll get a few more stakes and poke you everywhere but the heart, give you the slowest death known to mortal or vampire.”
“I’m not answering nothing.” Badass gave Lockman a fangy grin. “Anything happens to me, my friends will skin you and suck the blood straight from your heart.”
“Your friends? Vamps don’t have friends. None of your nest-mates will even notice you’re gone.”
A light dawned in his yellow eyes. “You’re the one. You broke in and killed Matthias.”
“That the name of your butt-ugly nest guard?”
“You’ve messed with the wrong vampires. You have no clue what you’re dealing with.”
“This coming from the vampire that thought he turned to dust when staked.”
“Fuck you.”
Lockman turned away and bent into the car. He tapped another compartment open and grabbed two more stakes. He sauntered back to the trapped vamp, casual, a stake in each hand.
Badass growled and jerked as if he could pull himself free. A bone snapped, the sound ricocheting like a shot down the alley. He threw his head back and howled.
Lockman knocked the stakes together like a pair of drumsticks. “First question. Why so many vamps living together like that? There a mortal housing you for something?”
The vamp spat onto Vera’s hood, leaving a thick red glob on her silver paint job. “Mortals controlling us? Now who’s the dumb one?”
“What’s the deal then, smart guy?”
“We’re part of the Syndicate. There are more of us.”
The vamp said it like it was supposed to mean something to Lockman. The thing might as well have been speaking Troll. “The Syndicate? You mean the mob?”
Badass laughed.
“What is the Syndicate?”
“Your worst nightmare, bitch.”
Lockman tucked the stakes in his back pockets. He shook his head and grabbed the vamp behind the neck. The glove sizzled on contact. “You need better comebacks.” He slammed the vamp’s face down against the hood. Now his cheek cooked against Vera’s paint while his neck continued to blister and crackle under the glove.
The vamp jerked, but every time he tried to lift his head, he increased the pressure against his neck. No matter which way he struggled, he burned. His shouts buzzed through the alley.
Much more of this and they might attract attention. Lockman let go.
Badass sprung up like a Jack in the Box. Half his face sluiced off, exposing parts of muscle and bone underneath. He tried to say something, but with part of his mouth melted off he only managed a wet slur.
“Now you look more like a real vampire.” Lockman pulled out the stakes again. He didn’t have time to waste on questions about this so-called Syndicate. He had to get to Teresa and move on. “Your people kidnapped a woman in Illinois. Do you know anything about that?”
Badass shook his head while pressing a hand against his ruined cheek Some of the flesh had already started to regenerate.
“Your Syndicate had nothing to do with that?”
“I didn’t say that.” The hand against his cheek helped keep his mouth together to speak, but the words still came out distorted, as if he was talking out the side of his mouth. Which, technically, he was.
Lockman pointed with one of the stakes at the hood. “You want to admire my paint job again?”
“Syndicate takes lots of women. Men. Kids. Whatever.”
“And does what?”
Badass shrugged. Hard to tell, but it looked like he smiled. “Welcome them to the fold.”
“They’re abducting humans to turn into vamps?”
“We call it recruiting. Didn’t hear about anything that far north, though. Things must be moving fast.”
“What’s the point of all this?”
“You can burn me and bleed me all you want, but I’
m not saying anything more. Whatever you do to me, they can do worse.”
Vamps did have a knack for torture. When Lockman had been with the Agency, he heard of reckless mortals who used vamps as interrogators. Some good men and woman suffered and died that way.
Lockman tucked a stake under his arm and pulled out a picture of Teresa he took from her apartment. It was of her and her sister. Teresa had it in a frame on her desk like a motivator. He showed the picture to the vamp. “Look familiar?”
Badass’s mouth started to heal, the flesh knitting back together, forming the smile on his face. “Oh, yeah.”
“Which one?”
“Chick on the left.”
Mandy. Teresa’s sister. A spark flared in Lockman’s belly. “Where is she?”
“Fuck if I know. In the system by now, I’d bet.” He squinted at the photo. “Chick on the right rings a bell, too.”
Lockman’s jaw ached from clenching his teeth. He took a deep breath through his nose to calm his nerves. Stay cool. “How?”
“She the one from Illinois?”
“How do you know her?”
“I don’t know her. But I saw her. Her and some big, friendly ogre were trolling clubs in the Quarter, asking all sorts of questions. Guess she asked the wrong one, huh?” He dropped his hand from his face. Much of the flesh had sewn itself back together, but left the skin pale and lined. Might scar. A hundred years from now the kid would almost look like an original vamp. He’d have his limits. Wouldn’t be able to change form like the originals. Wouldn’t have quite the strength or speed. But he would still grow to be dangerous.
Once upon a time, not too long ago, this kid belonged to this world.
Not anymore.
Lockman jammed both stakes into Badass’s chest.
The vamp hitched back, eyes wide and incredulous, as if asking Lockman how he could have done that to him. He fell forward. While the stakes to his heart melted him from the inside, Vera’s paint devoured his face. His clothes shriveled and melded with his boiling flesh. Eventually he left behind nothing but a smoking black scar across Vera’s hood.
