Fangtastic

by Lucienne Diver

  “I’m coming too.”

  “Whatever floats your boat.”

  Footsteps sounded like they were coming through the ceiling. Our time was up. “Go!”

  16

  I didn’t see Eric escape or the Feds tearing the place apart. It had been all I could do—at five foot nothing and a hundred pounds dripping wet, with daylight draining my vamp strength—to roll one of the empty kegs over to the others that hadn’t yet been tapped and to ghost inside. Going solid again all pretzeled up hadn’t exactly been comfortable, but I’d only been aware of it for seconds before sleep knocked me over the head and dragged me off to its dark lair of oblivion.

  I jerked awake as usual at sunset, panicking at the enclosed space, feeling myself back in the grave, in my coffin, having to fight my way out. But then my brain caught up with me. I remembered the keg and the chaos … and the ghosting. It had been for real, then. I’d finally found my superpower. Go me.

  I was still weak from being drained by the killer kids and unnaturally active by day … not to mention all the action I’d seen. It took everything I had to ghost out of the keg, smelling like an entire brewery. I was totally craving the blood of a caffeine addict, but I didn’t have time to go hunting and was still worried about feeding out of need. If I got through this, I was going to have to set myself on some kind of diet regimen. Regular meals. Spare blood I could down like an energy drink. I licked my lips and ended up grazing my tongue on a fang.

  Darn it, I had to focus. My backup would be here soon. I needed a plan, and I needed weapons. The Feds had tossed the taproom pretty well, looking for me, but it wasn’t until I moved into the main part of the club that I saw how thorough they’d been. The windows Eric had smashed to escape were still open to the night, letting in sticky-humid air. But those weren’t the only ugly holes dotting the walls. The Feds had made a few of their own, probably where they’d sensed hollow spots. Furniture had been displaced, overturned, or even ripped into. Chairs were belly up, legs in the air like dead bugs scattered across the floor.

  There was nothing for me here. I went to Very Scary’s office to check the schematic, hoping for a place helpfully labeled arsenal, but the Feds had, of course, raided the room and taken the computer. With nothing better to do at the moment, I conducted my own search of the office. I could make myself brass knuckles out of paperclips, but that was about all they’d left me. Or … wait. I came up with a silver letter-opener shaped like a dagger. It was tiny, but I tucked it into my cleavage. It might come in handy … if I ever needed to fight something smaller than a breadbox.

  I hoped the others arrived better armed and with enough to share.

  I didn’t have long to wait.

  We’re here, Bobby said in my head—I guess so they wouldn’t startle me with their arrival. I met him at the first floor bar area, amid the devastation.

  Before I could even take them all in, Bobby grabbed me and held me to his very nice chest. I was happy to stay there for a minute, running my hands over his back and just breathing in his scent. He’d been in such a rush, he hadn’t taken a shower before coming to my call. It made sense—kick butt first, shower later. Beating on baddies did tend to get your hands dirty, not to mention the rest of you. The point was that he smelled good … he smelled like him. There was a spicy, tangy scent to the blood roaring through his veins that made me want to take a bite out of him and then let him return the favor. I nuzzled the pulse point of his neck, teasing him with just the tips of my teeth, which had, of course, grown at the smell of him.

  “Now do you believe me?” I asked, not totally able to let it go.

  Bobby gazed down at me like he was a dying man lost in the desert and I was a sudden oasis. “Always. I never seriously doubted you. I just had to wrap my head around it. And when Sid and Maya declared you public enemy number one … I knew whose side I was on.”

  Then my brainy boy ran out of words and used his lips to show me exactly which side that was, sipping from me like I was that oasis and he’d been days without drink.

  Then two hands yanked us apart and Eric stood there glaring. “Can we maybe save my nephew first, snog later?”

  Bobby’s eyes were blue flame and still on me. “Later,” he promised.

  “You’d better believe it.”

  Reluctantly, I put off the idea of riding off into the sunset for a moonlit makeout session and turned to the others.

  My heart almost gave out, which wouldn’t, for me, have been that catastrophic, but I kinda wanted to keep it for moments like this. I had minions! Like, seriously.

  It wasn’t just Marcy, who I’d been expecting, although … maybe not dressed just like that. It was Brent and Eric too. But Marcy was the one who demanded my attention. She looked like the bastard love child of Rambo and a retro Miss America, except that her sash was a bandolier or whatever you called those things you always saw crisscrossing the hunky hero’s chest in action movies. It was fully loaded with ammo. Her dark, stick-straight hair was pulled back into a sleek club at the base of her neck. She looked beautiful and deadly. From the expression on Brent’s face, that was a pretty potent combo. In fact, he looked so shell-shocked I wondered if she’d already field-tested her ammo.

  “What are you wearing?” I asked.

  “My doomsday dress! Do you like it?” She spun and stopped with one leg cocked, striking a pose to offer up her most flattering angle. Stomach in, chest out. “We finished it last night, though I made some modifications on my own.”

  She unhooked a piece of hardware from her sash to

  show me.

  “Is that a grenade?” I asked, not daring to touch it.

  “A live one,” she answered proudly. “All you have to do is pull the pin—”

  “Don’t!” Eric and Brent said at the same time.

  She pouted. “Spoilsports.”

  I turned to Brent, giving him the hairy eyeball and waiting for him to flinch. “What about him? He’s one of them. How do we know we can trust him not to turn on us?”

  Marcy’s hand and Brent’s magically found each other and held tight. “Because I said so,” she answered, giving me a stink-eye all her own. Girlfriend could glare like the setting sun off a rearview mirror.

  My lips twitched. About damn time those two figured it out.

  “Good enough for me. But,” I said, not yet ready to release Brent when I had him on the hook, “if you betray us or hurt my friend in any way, you die a horrible death. Got it?”

  He smiled and kissed the hand he held, giving Marcy a look hot enough to burn the place to the ground. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Fine,” I said, finding I actually had to swallow around a lump in my throat. “Do we have a plan?”

  As it turns out, we did.

  We loaded up into the oldsmobile Eric had managed to secure. Bobby, with his long legs, was riding shotgun, and I was crammed in the back on the hump between the two love birds, who were about to light the car on fire with their smoldering glances. It was hard to hold on to the feeling of being badass while sitting in the kiddy seat, feet propped up on the center bump and knees almost to my chin.

  Eric parked almost exactly where I’d had Hunter park before. We traveled through the tall grass toward the “closed” clinic as silently as we possibly could. It made sense that’s where the Feds would have taken everyone—the vamps at the very least—to be strapped to beds and bled. At least they weren’t in possession of Eric’s machine. He’d rescued that. But they knew about it. I doubted they’d simply let it walk away. Or its creator. But Eric had apparently become one of my people, and I wasn’t going to let him get got.

  In short order, we stood approximately where Eric and I had met the other night. He’d already told the others about my spankin’ new power, and thus I was totally the lynchpin of the plan they’d worked out. If I didn’t do my part, no one else could do theirs. I gave Bobby a good-bye-for-now kiss, a lingering one. He nipped at my lower lip, and all I wanted to do w
as stand there forever with him, but I pulled back before Eric could clear his throat or otherwise give us away. I had to step apart from Bobby to focus on being insubstantial, invisible, untouchable. Otherwise, I’d stay too aware of my body. It took an extra second or two before I felt all ghostly. I heard Marcy gasp in awe. Maybe someday with enough practice I’d learn to pull this off with my eyes open. I’d love to have seen the expression on her face.

  I rose like hot air until I could sense the top of the fence from the way the breeze now seemed to strike me from a new direction. The others were going to give me until the count of three before they started their diversionary mayhem to pull the guards away from their posts so that I could materialize inside the facility to wreak my own havoc, disassembling the security system so they could storm the clinic. I floated across the grounds, going from memory toward the clinic, hoping to enter at just the right place.

  I felt the explosions outside the wall begin, like shock waves ripping through me, threatening to scatter me to the wind.

  Then the unthinkable happened. Some kind of security measure triggered, and suddenly I was thrown back into physical form and pinned to the ground by daylight. No, that couldn’t be possible. It was full night. But … oh crap, these weren’t searchlights that had come on. They were sunlamps. My vinyl dress didn’t so much go up in flame as begin to melt into me, searing into my flesh as if it would become my new candy coating. Guards rushed past from inside—two, four, more—and I held my scream to stay unnoticed. My only hope was to get through those doors before they closed behind the guards. I couldn’t do that if I was being tackled and shackled.

  I used the pain, the fear, the burning, everything I had to motivate myself into overdrive. The world was a blur as I flew into action, diving at the doors and skidding on my belly through them as they closed. I left a smear of vinyl. My dress tore, but it was the least of my worries. Heedless of anyone who might be watching, I rolled momentarily on the cool tile, extinguishing the flames. My boots had all but melted, the black soles leaving more streak marks behind on the tile. Served them right.

  I was in the emergency room foyer. I’d gotten that much right. Getting to my feet, body crying out with every movement, I saw that my minions had done their jobs with the grenades. The surveillance post was deserted. I hoped my peeps were out of reach of the horrible light and prayed my part wouldn’t come too late to save them if not.

  I pulled the cell phone–sized device Eric had given me from my cleavage, the only place I’d had to store it. There were three silver buttons on top of its matte black exterior that had to be hit in the right sequence. He’d shown me, and I did it now, placing the device on the ledge of the security window and cringing away as if it might hurt me, even though Eric promised it wouldn’t.

  It sent out a pulse that I felt almost the same way I

  felt Bobby’s powers. It seemed to echo through my blood and bones.

  And then everything went dark. Everything. All the lights, inside and outside, the screens behind the security desk. Everything that ran on electricity. Eric had called the device a portable electromagnetic pulse—EMP—transmitter, sure to knock out any electronics within a small sphere like this building.

  Now that full darkness had returned I could think clearly again. Lights out was the signal for the others to move in. They’d know instantly that Eric’s mini-machine had worked. It was time for part two of the plan … free the vamp body that Nelson was trapped in, along with all the other vamps the Feds had collected from the Tower. Bobby and the rest of my teammates would keep the guards busy and secure our escape route.

  With the electronics fried, there was no way to open the inner door, and the glass of the security window was sure to be bulletproof. The only way in was through. It had been freaky enough the times I’d stupidly almost fallen through objects, like the stairs back at the Tower. I’d felt dense, heavy, like something else’s mass was combining with mine. I had a horrible fear that if I lost focus … or maybe gained it, even for a second … I might not get sorted out again. I mean, machine parts were all well and good for Iron Man, but for me … Well, hey, if I became a clockwork girl, at least I’d be a shoe-in for the Burgess Brigade.

  Anyway, I had no choice. I grabbed hold of my sense of self and concentrated on being me, but less physical. Me as a spiritual being. My old gang would laugh themselves silly at the thought. But the joke would be on them, because I was lighter than air, lighter even than a carb-starved supermodel.

  I took a figurative breath and launched myself through the inner door. There was that moment of thickness, where I felt caught and held fast, a fly in amber, then I pulled free and was out again. If I’d still been human or, you know, embodied, I’d be hyperventilating. But panic wasn’t on my agenda. Rescue was.

  I came back to myself on the other side, needing my actual senses to scope things out. I knew the general layout from my other invasion, but I didn’t know—ah ha! Down the right-hand corridor, two of the doors were ajar. Evidently they hadn’t been shut at the time of the pulse. I’d start there. If those rooms were occupied and I could free their occupants first, I’d have built-in backup. I wouldn’t be battering in doors all by my lonesome. Because how wrong was it that I now had minions but was totally still on my own?

  The hallway was clear, but I didn’t know for how long. In my last pass-through, I’d seen how much security they had on staff, and I knew I hadn’t seen enough of them run by me while I was burning near to death to empty the place out. I had to act fast.

  I bolted for the closest open door off the corridor. Immediately, something pierced my arm, and I looked down to see a hypodermic needle sticking out of my flesh. I raised my glance from the needle to the fear-crazed eyes of the white-coated guy who’d jabbed me with it, and I swear he nearly wet himself at the look on my face. He made a sudden move to my right, but with a human facing down a vamp, “sudden” was a relative term. He didn’t have a prayer. I grabbed him by both shoulders and threw him to the ground, leaping on top of him. I forced him to look at me.

  “What was in the needle?” I growled.

  “N-n-nothing. Just a needle from my cart. I’m a phlebotomist.”

  “A what?”

  “A blood guy,” came a chill voice from one of the two beds in the small room. I knew that voice.

  “Selene?”

  “Just snap his neck and be done with it,” she answered. “You bust us out and you’re in. You’ve proven yourself.”

  Oh, right. She had no idea my mission had been called on account of conscience.

  The blood-boy squirmed and thrashed and did his level best to escape, but there was no way I was killing anyone. Not if I could help it. Someone who went around sticking other people for blood surely wouldn’t mind a donation of his own. After all, didn’t they say that charity begins at home?

  My teeth were already down with that thought. I caught a whiff of him as I lowered my lips to his neck. Fear, as intoxicating as it might be, did not do good things for a man’s scent. Not generally. But I forgot all that when my teeth pierced the flesh of his neck, and his hot, sweet blood came pouring out. I didn’t lose myself this time. I was way too conscious of the ticking clock. I took just enough to feel my burns begin to heal and the exhaustion of the past few days slip away. I felt more energized. More superhuman. More me. If only the blood would do the same for my clothes.

  When I pulled back, I dealt him a blow to the head where I’d learned in training it would do the most good. He wouldn’t be coming after us or raising any alarms, but he’d live.

  I raced to Selene’s bedside and began undoing her straps. As soon as her hands were free, she started ripping needles and tubing out of her arms. I got to work on her leg restraints.

  “I’ve got this,” she said. “You just take care of Zzz—

  uh, Xavier.”

  It wasn’t what she’d meant to say, I’d stake my whole collection of Dolce & Gabbana on it. The list of names starting with the Z
sound was pretty short. In fact, I could think of only one other, more of a nickname, really—Xander.

  I looked over at the other table, but the vamp there seemed glassy-eyed. Not all bright-eyed and bushy-fanged like I expected fellow vamps to be this time of night. I approached his bed and started on his restraints, using the excuse to lean in and whisper, hopefully too quietly for Selene to hear, “Nelson?” She didn’t want me to know who I had, and that made me suspicious.

  His eyes focused on me, but the befuddlement didn’t clear, which made total sense, since I was a complete stranger in a melted vinyl dress, smelling like a killer cocktail of car tire and char.

  “Who—?” I could practically hear his lips crack as they opened and wondered how long it had been since he’d fed. With a body that big, he’d totally need to feed on a regular basis. He was about the size of a basketball player, with the pro-ball buzz-cut cookin’ too. Reddish brown hair grew right into sideburns that in turn led into a closely shaved chinstrap beard. Handsome in a totally Cro-Magnon sort of way.

  “Your uncle sent me,” I whispered, falling silent just as Selene appeared beside me, staring down at Nelson like he was the cherry on her sundae and she could just eat him up, which totally grossed me out, because she probably had, like, a century on him at the very least. Talk about cougar. But I guess that was only if she wanted him for his mind … the current one. She’d called him Xander … or just kept herself from calling him that, anyway. I was pretty sure that was who she saw when she looked at him, even knowing that he was currently body-swapped.

  Selene tore at the bonds around his legs, then helped him to stand, gripping him tightly.