“¡Consigue tu propia espada, puta!”
“What?” I grunt. “I took French in high school.”
The guy pauses to give me a stare of ‘really?’ before tugging at my hands, trying to get his sword back. Mostly, he drags me around by it.
“Oh, you want this?” I abruptly let go of the blade.
His own strength flings him over backward the instant I’m no longer resisting, his arms and the blade up in the air leaving his chest undefended. I fly-leap after him, shredding my claws down his front and landing seated on top of him, straddling his hips. This I have training for. Grandma Sheridan had a cat that used to destroy her cushioned furniture.
The guy howls as I rake and shred at him, digging into his guts like a dog trying to bury a treat. The katana is too long for him to get the blade around on me in a proper swing, so he tries bonking me on the head with the handle, but it doesn’t bother me. Blood and fragments of flesh go everywhere from my cat-on-sofa technique. A sharp pain jolts down into my left side. I ignore it, thrusting my hand up under his ribs until I grab hold of his pulsating heart—and crush it between my fingers. As soon as my claws reduce the hot lump of muscle to bacon strips, he goes limp and flops flat on his back.
It’s at that moment, kneeling here with my right arm up to the elbow in vampire, I finally notice he’d plunged the katana straight down into my left shoulder. I got lucky, it only pierced my lung—missed my heart, but I think the tip went in so far it scraped my hip bone.
Ouch.
I extract my arm from him with a gooey slurp, grasp the katana, and draw it up out of my body. Surprisingly, it doesn’t hurt much at all coming out. There are probably a handful of jobs I could theoretically handle in my current state of existence as a vampire. ‘Katana scabbard’ is not one of them.
The remaining thug, his one arm shredded to tatters, his other half missing, lays motionless on his front, perhaps having succumbed to blood loss. Sam makes a face like he stepped in dog poo, grasps the forearm dangling from his neck, and tugs it off.
“You okay?” I ask.
Sam waves the severed arm at me, then chucks it aside. “Make me forget this happening. I don’t want to remember some dude’s cut-off arm touching me.”
Ronan, Jordan, and Daryl all stare at me, their mouths open.
I stand and limp over to the ‘disarmed’ vampire. Just to be sure he won’t cause more problems, I lop his head off with the katana. Don’t want him springing awake starved of blood and savaging the boys.
“What the heck is going on?” blurts Daryl.
“Nothing you’re going to remember.” I stare into Sam’s eyes and remove the severed arm from his memory.
Dalton zooms in the double doors, skids to a stop nearby, and stares at me incredulously.
I blink at him. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing. You didn’t wait for me to get up?” He sets his hands on his hips and exhales. The guy has the look of someone whose alarm clock failed, woke up way late, and went from dead asleep to being at work in about fifteen minutes.
“No. Wasn’t the plan for me to get in and out of here before they woke up?” I rub my shoulder. “Ow. That’s gonna be sore for a bit.”
He eyes the katana, then plucks a large knife off the belt of the vampire with half an arm left. “You know what you’re doing with that thing?”
I shrug. “Nope. Course, I don’t really know what I’m doing with claws either.”
“We can work on swordplay sometime, assuming of course we make it out of here.” He waves us toward the double doors. “We need to—”
Rapid footsteps, the clicking of guns readying, and a whole lot of cursing echo in the hallway outside.
Dalton slams the double doors and braces himself against them. “So much for that.”
A sneaker squeaks behind me.
I glance over at Sam holding the crowbar, the other boys all having armed themselves with pipes or metal rods.
Wham!
A heavy impact bounces the doors inward, but Dalton holds his ground.
“No way!” I point at the boys. “You four stay back.”
Another slam nearly throws Dalton to the floor.
“Crikey, they’re a touch cheesed off.” He widens his stance. “Best attack is to stab them in the brain. That’ll knock them—” He lurches forward when the vampires outside hit the door again. “Unconscious. Heart’s not too bad, but it’s only a momentary stun.”
I already know cutting the head off doesn’t cause unconsciousness, or even paralyze the body. Yeah, the total stuff of nightmares. Gotta damage the brain to knock a vampire out.
“What are we gonna do?” asks Ronan.
“Find a window?” asks Daryl.
Sam shakes his head. “There aren’t any or we would’ve made it out last time. We had to go down the hall but got caught.”
Blix babbles.
“He wants us to go to the bathroom,” says Sam.
“He’s gonna need to hold it,” I mutter.
Blix face-palms.
“Any ideas?” I ask, staring at Dalton.
“Only one, and it’s not very good. Gonna need to fight.” He grunts, pressing himself against the doors, holding back the constant hammering.
Someone fires a bullet through the door, missing his ear by an inch.
“You ready?” asks Dalton.
“Boys! Get down,” I shout.
The kids scramble around behind the conveyor.
I grab the katana in a two-handed grip. “Yeah. I’m lying, but yeah.”
“Move to the side. Don’t stand right in the way or you’ll get shot.”
“Okay.” I hurry to the right, near the wall in an ambushing position.
“Oi. ’Ere goes.”
Dalton mouths three… two… one…
22
A Shortcut's a Shortcut
Dalton times it so he moves an instant before the mass of vampires outside rams the door again.
Without his resistance, the crowd of Scions slams the doors open hard enough to bend the hinges. The first three spill forward, landing on their chests, other vampires behind them stumbling as well. Dalton pounces on the one nearest him, stabbing his knife into the man’s ear. I hack the katana into the head of a thirtyish woman wearing punk clothes, nearly cutting her head in half. She twitches, fangs out, and goes still.
Vampire unconsciousness looks fatal, but she’ll get back up in a few hours.
The dude in the middle does a push-up that flings him to his feet. He evades Dalton’s knife and rolls away from me when I slice at him. Another guy jumps on me from the right, knocking me flat and riding me like a toboggan for several feet across the bare concrete floor. As soon as we stop moving, he puts a gun to the side of my head, but I elbow his arm aside an instant before he fires. The bullet bounces off the floor—and I’m pretty sure my eardrum exploded.
A faint high-pitched war cry accompanies Sam charging in and Conan the Barbarian swinging his crowbar over his head like a two-handed sword. He lands the curved part right on the vampire’s wrist, shattering it and making him drop the handgun. Somewhere to my left, grunts and growls come from Dalton taking on a group all by himself.
The dude on top of me glares at Sam, but the distraction lets me throw him aside. I levitate to my feet, flying after him—and thrust the sword up his nose as he crashes to the floor. A quick twist elicits a crunch and a spurt of blood from his mouth.
“Make me forget seeing that, too,” says Sam. “After.”
“Look out!” shout Daryl, Ronan, and Jordan at the same time.
I instinctively jump in front of Sam and raise the sword to defend myself—but they were talking to Dalton. Fortunately, the guy who got the drop on him from behind with a shotgun experiences a misfire.
The weapon only clicks.
Oh, Blix… I could kiss you.
I charge at that guy, but another vampire comes at me from the left swinging a machete. Parry
ing with a sword is so far out of my skill set that I don’t even try, relying instead on dodging. This guy doesn’t feel faster than me, which could mean he’s relatively new. However, he’s had a lot more practice fighting with a blade, so I end up giving ground, moving away from Dalton and the other six or so vampires going after him.
Sam runs up behind him and nails the guy in the shin with the crowbar. The strike is trivial, but it hurts enough to make the guy shriek and stumble—which gives me an opening. I fake an overhead swing to lure his defense up, then pull the blade back and thrust it into the underside of his chin. A few inches of katana pokes out the top of his skull. His eyes cross. Blood runs down the blade and foams from his lips. Growling, I push forward, slicing the blade a few inches deeper into his head before tearing the sword out and letting him collapse flat on the floor. Wow, this thing is sharp.
“Sarah! Right!” yells Sam.
A blur comes at me. I dive backward away from it, going horizontal in midair as another machete passes over me. The vampire swinging it stumbles forward, unprepared for his strike to hit nothing but air. Rather than chase me, he rushes straight for Sam.
My idiot brother raises the crowbar to defend himself—but a steel conveyor belt roller comes skidding across the floor and slides perfectly under the guy’s foot. He wipes out and lands on his back. I pounce, spearing the katana into his eye hard enough to chip the concrete floor under his skull.
Dalton jumps on a guy with a one-armed hug, looking like a pair of drunk friends—only he stabs the guy in the chest, then up under the chin before throwing him into the path of two more vampires rushing at him together. The body takes the one on the left down, but the other gets past him.
Bang.
Another gunshot comes from my right—and the hot stab of pain in my chest is a pretty clear indication of who they fired at. I hurl myself to the left, trying to avoid a short, wide-necked Hispanic dude in the doorway firing twice more at me; the first bullet hits me above the right boob, the second misses.
Boom.
Most of the skin on the face of the vampire who shot me disintegrates in a bloody splat. Naked red skull stares at me—well as much as someone with no eyeballs left can stare. He howls, mostly in anger, and grabs at his face.
Thump.
I glance left. Sam’s flat on his back holding the shotgun that failed to head-explode Dalton. His facial expression looks like a chemist who got an unexpected (explosive) result in the lab. I’m sure his shoulder is in pain, but he looks more bewildered at his failure to anticipate the strength of the recoil.
At least the dude who shot me had a smallish gun. The two holes it put in me burn a bit but don’t slow me down. Rusty rapiers stuck into me hurt more. Dalton’s bleeding from several slashes, stabs, and gunshot wounds. Four of the vampires around him are limp on the floor, but the remaining two are pushing him back.
The one Sam de-faced with the shotgun starts shooting randomly. Several of his bullets hit his buddies, as well as Dalton. Most clank off the various conveyors and machinery in here. Screams of panic come from Sam’s three friends. My brother rolls over onto his front and crawls under the conveyor, abandoning the shotgun. Guess it hurt too much for him to dare do that again.
I dash over to the shotgun, landing in a skid on my knees, and drop the sword nearby. Nothing happens when I pull the trigger at the guy still unloading his 9mm all over the place.
“Pump it!” yells Sam.
What? Oh. Duh. Umm. I try to do that ‘pumping’ thing they always have characters in video games and movies do. Really, this ought to be easy. I’ve played enough Call of Duty. Apparently, that’s not a perfectly accurate recreation of reality. Who’d have thought video games aren’t the same as actual combat training? Grr. Finally, I apply the right amount of force to the right thing and the handgrip slides back, ejecting a smoking plastic shell and chambering a new one.
Aha!
No-face dude is out of ammo and flailing at the air. So, I pivot to the left and fire low at the two thugs corralling Dalton. The guy on the left steps on something that makes him fall right as I pull the trigger. My shotgun erupts with the same loud boom as before but doesn’t kick anywhere near as bad as I expected. Half the guy’s head liquefies into a reddish splortch. If he hadn’t fallen over backward, I would’ve hit him in the ass.
“Thanks, Blix!”
He babbles something in a happy tone.
The other vampire stabs Dalton in the gut, but apparently, fell for a trap. The men hit each other at the same time, only my sire rammed his knife into the other guy’s ear. Puree brain is instant lights out for a vampire—or anyone else, really. We just get back up after a few hours.
Dalton throws the guy off to the side and looks around while I pump the shotgun again and put another blast into No-Face’s head. The second hit goops the interior of the skull, knocking him out. I pump it again before swapping it to one hand and grabbing the katana in my left.
“This is a damn mess. Is that all of them?” I ask.
“I don’t think so, but it’s still not quite completely dark. We need to get out of here right now.” Dalton waves for the boys to follow and rushes out into the hall.
It’s nothing short of a miracle that the boys don’t hesitate to run past the mangled, bleeding bodies we left littered around. Oh, it’s such a good thing I can play with memories. Might even let Dalton deal with this since he’s had a lot more practice at it. Don’t want anything resurfacing in the kids’ heads for a nightmare. It’s weird to say, but the sword felt more useful than a gun. Well, maybe not the shotgun, but handguns? Sierra might have something with wanting to learn how to actually use a blade after all.
One of the gang vampires springs up unexpectedly as I run past him toward the hall. He jumps on my back, sinking his fangs into my shoulder. Holy shit that burns like a son of a bitch. I’m screaming before consciously realizing I’m screaming. Dalton skids to a stop and starts running back toward us.
All four boys attack the guy with their crowbar and pipes. The combined assault is apparently painful enough that he lets go of me to deal with them, shoving me forward before whirling on the boys. He grabs Ronan and Sam by their shirts and pulls them up off their feet.
I spin, put the shotgun against the back of his head, and fire.
The blast of liquefied vampire head showers Daryl and Jordan with gore. An eyeball bounces off Jordan’s forehead. Sam and Ronan sink back to their feet as the strength leaves the vampire’s arms.
Oh yeah. There is going to be much rewriting of memory later.
Daryl throws up. Apparently, the poor kid’s mouth had been open.
“He’s not dead,” I say. “Just… very unconscious.”
Dalton grasps me from behind. “That’s bloody disgusting.”
“We’re deleting everything from their memory.”
“Aye. Absolutely. C’mon.” He tugs at my arm.
The two gore-drenched boys are too shell-shocked to do anything more than stand there gawking, so I hit them with a mental compulsion to follow me. Sam and Ronan sprint after me down the hall while the other two kinda zombie-walk.
We race past multiple doors on both sides. Blix screams from behind. He’s gesturing with all four limbs and his tail at a door with a standard men’s bathroom icon on it.
“Not now,” I yell. “We gotta get out of here.”
Blix scream-babbles.
“Sare!” shouts Sam. “He says we’re gonna die if we don’t go in there.”
“Crap. Okay. Dalton!” I do a one-eighty and run back to the two stunned boys, dragging them faster than they’re able to walk into the mens’. Since my hands are full, I punt the door open and go inside.
Four stalls stand on the left, two of the doors missing. A pair of urinals hang from the wall straight ahead, and there’s a counter on the right with three sinks and three rectangular mirrors. Fortunately, it doesn’t stink too badly in here, though there is a lingering air of urine, likely soaked into
the floor from before the place was abandoned.
Sam and Ronan zoom inside, hurrying over to me.
“Sarah?” calls a distant echoing voice that sounds an awful lot like Sophia.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I shout.
Dalton barrels in the door, slams it, and leans against it. “Oh, this feels familiar, doesn’t it?”
I exhale hard. “Just a bit. Am I hearing things or did my kid sister just call for me?”
Blix nods and points at the mirrors.
“Oh, crap… seriously?”
The imp flails and chitters at me.
“Umm, Sare?” asks Sam. “He says he was trying to tell you that he could’ve brought you and Dalton down here inside the mirrors in like a half hour so you didn’t have to fly all night.”
“Ugh. My fault. I was in a hurry.” I grab Daryl’s head and stare into his eyes. “Dalton, will you fix Jordan?”
“Bit busy with the door here, luv,” whispers Dalton, a hint of manic high-pitch to his voice.
Sure enough, the banging has already started. At least he’s got a better position there with one foot braced on the sink counter and only a single door to hold shut.
I hurriedly wipe Daryl’s memory of everything that happened from the time they walked out of the security cage to right now. Can’t do much about the blood all over them… but I can always fix that later—if we make it out of here.
Dalton holds the door while I go from boy to boy, deleting all the vampire stuff. I leave them remembering that a gang from Los Angeles who a friend of mine pissed off abducted them in a bid to get me to turn against him. Except for Sam, they don’t remember anything about vampires. In my brother’s case, he only loses witnessing gore, basically turning it into a PG action movie. He still shot the one guy, but the vampire flew over backward so fast he didn’t see the wound, just a bloodless video game bad guy going down.
There.
The boys will remain sane and not need—much—therapy.
Ordinary Problems of a College Vampire (Vampire Innocent Book 7) Page 25
