The big wolf collapsed, wiping his face with one paw and holding his crushed groin with the other. As he went down, I put my right kneecap through his nose. His head hit the stone with a sickening crack, and his eyes rolled back in his head. The bowie knife skittered across the lobby. After a couple of seconds, I heard a slow, sarcastic clapping and looked up to see Tiram walking slowly toward me.
“Well done, James. I thought the part where you vomited on your opponent was truly inspired.” He offered me a handkerchief. I wiped the blood from my lips and passed it back to him. “Keep it,” he said with a small hand gesture.
“Thanks. I came up with that move all on my own. We gonna fight now? ’Cause if so, you win.”
I put the handkerchief in a back pocket and walked over to where Krysta had been watching the fight. She’d obviously decided that hanging around the superior firepower was a good move, because I found her holed up behind the guard station with Sabrina and all the guns.
“My hero,” she gushed, throwing her arms around my neck in mock gratitude.
I pushed her away, in not mock disgust. “Lay off. I hooked up with you before. It didn’t end well. Why didn’t you run?”
“It needed to end, one way or the other. Now that you’ve beaten him, I’ll drain him, and we’ll be done with this silliness once and for all.”
She started toward where King lay helpless, and I caught her arm. She struggled for a minute until Sabrina tapped her on the shoulder with a shotgun and raised one eyebrow meaningfully. Apparently, there had been a conversation while all the fighting was going on.
“I said nobody else dies tonight, and I meant it. Now, we’re leaving, and you’re leaving town. If I ever see you again, or even hear about you turning anyone else in my city, you’re dust.” I held out a hand for Sabrina, and we started for the door.
“Your city, James?” Tiram asked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that sounded like a power play on your part.”
Chapter 27
I turned and walked over to the Master of the City, picking up my sword along the way. The faerie blade glowed with a blue-white light as I approached Tiram, and I saw that flicker in his eyes again.
“I don’t care how it sounds, Tiram. This is the deal. She has until midnight tomorrow night to get the hell out of Charlotte. After that, if I ever see her, smell her or hear rumor of her anywhere near this town, I’ll stake her myself. This is a one-time pass, a limited-time offer. And if you don’t like that, we can dance right now.”
I was bluffing, of course. Tiram could take me on my best day, and my best day would always be one that didn’t include a fistfight with a werewolf. The only real card I had was the sword in my hand, and by the way Tiram was focused on the glow coming from it, it was the ace I needed.
The Master looked at me with a little smile, the way a parent looks at their ten-year-old who’s just made a perfectly logical argument for having ice cream for breakfast. He stared at me for a long moment, then surveyed the lobby. King was starting to come around, Sabrina was still packing a shotgun and at least one pistol, and Greg had come back into the building once it was safe for Emily.
Krysta shot the Master a look of appeal, but he shrugged and finally said, “As you wish, James. Krysta, my hospitality is hereby revoked. You are forbidden to remain in my city past midnight tomorrow, and you may never return under pain of death.” He looked back at me. “Happy?”
“Thrilled. And Tiram? Next time you bring somebody in from outside the territory to settle your scores for you, don’t make it be Krysta.” I replied, turning and heading back to the door.
“Well done, James. You figured it out. I brought Krysta in to start the fight with Wideham because I knew you’d find her, and you couldn’t resist if she were involved. Nice work. You may grow up to be a detective yet.”
I sketched a little bow, came up with one finger pointed to the sky in Tiram’s direction and turned for the door.
I made it about halfway across the lobby before Krysta got up the nerve to charge me, screaming like a banshee. I braced for another fight, but before I had a chance to slug my maker in the face a few times, she was tackled by a blonde streak that moved faster than any vampire I’d ever seen, including Tiram.
Abby drove a shoulder into Krysta’s gut and kept right on going, running full speed into an elevator with the elder vampire taking all the force of the impact. Then, she unleashed a savage beating on her vamp-mother. It was no hair-pulling, eye-gouging chick fight. It was vampire claws, fangs and superhuman speed. Krysta looked like a frog in a blender as Abby rained punch after punch on her face, then commenced to banging her head against the polished marble floor. Less than a minute into the fight, Krysta was out cold, and Abby was up and headed to where King had rolled to one side to watch the carnage.
“Move,” she snarled at the werewolf, and he scooted quickly out of her way. She picked up the bowie knife where King had dropped it, and raced back to where Krysta lay moaning, both legs broken and probably her skull as well.
I dashed to intercept Abby, but she stiff-armed me into a wall, and I sat down hard, seeing little birds and stars for about the fifth time that night.
Abby stalked over to Krysta, stood over her and said, “This is where Jimmy would say something annoying, but I don’t care enough to come up with a joke.”
She grabbed the vampiress by the hair with her left hand, pulled her into a sitting position and cut off her head. A black mist billowed out of her neck wound like a cloud of angry insects, coalescing around Abby for a moment before dissipating through the air.
Son of a bitch. My vamp-mom was possessed by a Sluagh.
Abby dropped the head a couple of feet away from the body, tossed the knife to land near King and walked toward the front door.
“I have an Escalade. It seats seven. Let’s go.”
She didn’t look back at any of us as she headed out the door, and we all just watched her go. After a couple of seconds, Greg and Emily followed her wordlessly out to the waiting car, leaving me alone in the lobby with my almost-girlfriend, the Master of the City, and a werewolf that I’d beaten half to death. I wasn’t sure which one of them I was more afraid of.
Sabrina came over to where I lay on my back on the marble floor and knelt down. “You okay?”
I got almost all the way up into a sitting position, then winced as I felt something slide back into its original anatomical location. “No. I mean, yeah. I mean . . . crap. Lemme try that again. Nothing’s seriously broken, but the cold marble feels really good on all the hurt spots. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Where does it hurt?”
“I don’t think my left pinky toe hurts. And my lips. And my right ear. Everything else is pretty well beat to shit.”
She leaned in and kissed me, and I felt a lot better. “I knew you’d come for me.”
“I always will. You’re . . . I . . . I suck at this, sorry.”
“You haven’t had a whole lot of practice.” She smiled a little. “Neither have I.”
“Can we figure it out together? Might be a lot of fun trying.”
“It might at that.” She pulled back and looked at me.
I tensed, waiting for it. This was that moment. The one where the girl says something nonsensical and gentle and then walks out of the hero’s life forever. But she didn’t do that.
She let out a deep breath and said, “I really did. I knew you’d come for me. I’ve never had anybody I could trust like that. Not family, not a partner on the force, nobody.”
“You’ve got somebody now,” I said, and pulled her back in for another kiss. “Now help me up. That wolf-man really kicked my ass.”
Sabrina stood, then held out a hand for me. I groaned as I got to my feet, then looked over at Tiram. I gestured to Krysta’s rapidly dissolving corpse. “We’re not going to have any problems between us after this, are we?”
“She was no longer protected by my hospitality. I care nothing for what happened to her
.”
“And the Professor?” If the guy was going to come after me, I wanted to know about it.
“Wideham and his band of morons had become an annoyance. By destroying them, you performed a service. That service almost balances the cost of the mess you created. Almost. I will not seek redress for the money you have cost me, and you are free to live in Professor Wideham’s house, but the apartment here reverts to me. And I expect you to stay out of my wine cellar.”
“Most days,” I promised.
“Fair enough.” He pressed a button for the elevator and got in as I turned to face King.
The big wolf-man had regained his feet and sheathed his bowie knife. He was human again, mostly naked, covered in blood and puke. He stood over Krysta’s body, watching her turn to dust and slowly stroking the gold band on his left ring finger.
“We good?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’re good.”
“Thanks for your help tonight.”
“Don’t sweat it.”
“Sorry I kicked your ass.”
“Sorry I kicked yours.”
We stood there for a long minute before the last bits of Krysta disappeared into a pile on the stone floor.
“What’s next for you?” I asked.
“Go home. See about putting my life back together. Stay the hell away from vampires.” He held out a hand.
I looked at it for a second, then gave it a shake.
“You’re not bad for a soulless bloodsucking fiend, Black,” he said, as we walked out the front door.
He turned left to where his truck was parked at an expired meter, tore up the tickets under his windshield wiper and got in. He fired up the truck and pulled a U-turn in the middle of the busy street, peeling rubber as he headed off to start over.
“You’re not bad, either, King. For an overgrown Peekapoo,” I murmured as I got into the passenger seat of the Escalade.
We’d gone about a mile before my curiosity overwhelmed me, and I looked over at Abby. “Where’d the car come from?”
“It’s on loan from the bank. Or I guess it’s on loan from a banker. He let me borrow it for a week while he’s on vacation.” She giggled a little.
“Where did he go?” I asked, my head full of visions of dead bankers littering downtown.
“Nowhere. But he’s going to think he went to Aruba and let me borrow his car. Don’t worry, Jimmy, I didn’t kill him. Just mojo’d him a little.” She reached over and patted my leg. “I know how testy you get about killing the entrées.”
“I get testy about killing everyone, Abby. So you want to explain why you beat Krysta into paste?” I looked over at her, and her face had gone grave and very still. It looked as though she was getting the hang of being a vampire.
I wasn’t sure I liked that.
“She killed me. I killed her back. Sounds fair to me,” she said, not looking at me.
I stared at her for another mile or two, and she finally cracked. I’d had more time to practice the stony vampire stare, and she wilted under my impassive gaze.
“Please don’t hate me, Jimmy,” she whispered, a pale pink tear rolling down her cheek. “I lost it. I saw her coming at you, and I just lost it. I couldn’t stand the thought of her hurting you, and then I couldn’t stand the thought of her hurting anyone else. I had her down, she was beaten, but she looked up at me at the end and smirked at me, as though nothing I did mattered. That’s what did it. I had to wipe that smirk off her stupid face.” Abby pulled the SUV into a parking space near our new house and sat there, head on the steering wheel, shoulders shaking.
I reached over and clumsily patted her on the shoulder for a second or two. She glanced up at me, smiling like she’d just won the lottery or something.
“Gotcha!” Abby yelled, peals of laughter filling the cab of the Escalade. “Seriously, Jimmy, did you really buy all that navel-gazing crap? I was pissed. Sure, I didn’t want her hurting you, but the bottom line is, that bitch killed me, so I returned the favor. Now let’s go have a beer. We won this one!” She got out of the truck and slammed the door behind her.
I looked back at Sabrina and saw the furrowed brow and worried look on her face that mirrored my own. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I’d seen a familiar shadow flicker through Abby’s eyes.
“We’ll take care of this later,” I said, opening my own door. “For now, a beer sounds really good.”
Chapter 28
I sat on the steps of the frat house, cold beer in my hand and Sabrina by my side, as we stared at the stolen Escalade across the parking lot. Greg and his sister sat on the tailgate for a long time before they got up. He hugged her for a long moment, then I saw him stare into her eyes and walk back to the frat house. Emily walked across the lot, got into a newish Prius and drove off without seeming to notice we were there.
“You all right?” I asked Greg as I handed him a beer.
“Nope.” He twisted off the cap and flicked it into the distance. “You want to talk about it?” Sabrina asked, leaning around me to stare
at my partner. Her brown hair fell in front of her furrowed brow, and I absently reached over to tuck it behind her ear. She caught my hand as I brought it back down and held it while she watched for Greg’s response.
“Nope.” He drained his beer and reached for another. I passed him one from the cooler behind Sabrina and watched as he sucked it down, too. It wasn’t as though he could get drunk off a few beers, or even a whole lot of beers, but drinking as an Olympic event was more my speed than Greg’s.
We sat there in silence looking up at the stars for a long time. Okay, we were doing more airplane-watching than star-gazing, since we were still in the city, but it was still pretty nice to sit still after the week we’d had. I was enjoying the quiet and the warmth of Sabrina’s hand in mine when Greg spoke again.
“I mojo'd her,” he murmured.
“You had to,” I said.
“I know, but it sucks.”
“Yeah, but it sucks less than her waking up tomorrow and knowing the
truth. That doesn’t do anybody any good.” I put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged me off. “I hate this, you know? This whole thing. I hate it. I know you think it’s cool, being a detective, playing superhero. But it’s not. There’s nothing cool about this. We’re just doing what we can to make it suck as little as possible, and maybe help somebody else out along the way. That’s all we’ve got. We don’t get to grow up. We don’t get to have families. We just get to play video games and run around in stolen cars and watch our friends die. And I hate it. And I hate you for doing this to me.” Greg never looked at me. He just stared straight ahead and let the heat in his voice carry through the whispered words.
I stared at him, not knowing what to say. After a minute that stretched into hours, all I came up with was a whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he said. “And most days, that’s enough. Most days, I can deal with being twenty-two and fat forever, with never being able to meet a girl who might actually like me, with never going to the beach with my kids someday like my parents did with me. Most days, I’m okay with it. But today’s not that day. Today, I want to meet my little sister’s fiancé. Today, I want to see her graduate in May. Today, I want to be the big brother that looks out for her all the time, not just at night. Today . . . I want to kill your sorry ass.” He stood up and went into the house.
A few seconds later, I heard a door slam in the basement and knew that he had locked himself in a room.
“He’ll be okay,” Sabrina said.
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t mean that.”
“Yeah, he did. Today he did. And he’s right. I did this to him. I lost control and killed my best friend, and now he’s got to put up with my mistake forever.”
“You didn’t know. You couldn’t know.”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? It’s done. I took everything away from him. He didn’t deserve that. Nobody does.”
“Life sucks,
wear a helmet,” Sabrina replied in a steely voice.
I whipped my head around to stare at her, openmouthed. After a second of doing my best fish out of water impression, I asked, “What?”
“Life’s hard, Jimmy. You can wallow in it, or you can move on. No, it’s not fair that you got turned into a vampire right out of college. It’s not fair that you went nuts and drained your best friend, and now you guys are stuck in a bizarro Friends episode forever. It’s not fair that Mike has cancer, or that Abby got turned before she graduated, or that my gay cousin is really a changeling from Faerieland or that my boyfriend is an undead monster. But this is the hand we were dealt. You made a choice. You chose to help people. You could have decided to be a psycho like Krysta, or a cold-blooded ass like Tiram, but you decided to take all your crap and do some good with it. So quit whining and play the game.”
She reached into the cooler, got two more beers and handed one to me.
I sat there staring at her for another minute, then twisted the top off my beer. “Boyfriend?”
“That’s what you got from what I said?”
“Yep. It was either that or undead monster.”
“Shut up and kiss me, you idiot.” So I did.
For a long time.
Acknowledgments
As always, this book would not have been possible without the love and support of my amazing wife, Suzy. There are a few other folks I’d like to take a moment to mention here.
I’ve got to give a big shout out to my buddy Curtis Krumel for suggesting the name of the book. It’s fairly obvious that I’m working on a theme here, and Curtis gave me this title.
Thanks to Valerie Huffman for the initial beta-read, I appreciate her help in letting me know if I was too far off track with the book. And thanks to everyone who has read the first few books and become friends with Jimmy, Greg, Sabrina and Mike. I love these characters, and it makes a poor author feel fantastic to know that you guys do too.
As always, you can find me online at johnhartness.com, and you can email me at [email protected].
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