ReVamped

by Lucienne Diver

  “On three,” Bobby said.

  We both backed down a step, prepared to launch full out for the door.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  We flew forward, bashing our shoulders into it to no effect.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” someone asked from below. “You’re blocking the door.”

  “It’s jammed,” Bobby answered.

  “Duh,” someone else said. “Let me try.”

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar. I turned to look, and my heart sunk into my stomach like the deadweight it was. The voice belonged to Rick’s pal, the redheaded sweat-child from the hospital bathroom. If he recognized me, which seemed pretty likely since I was still totally in goth regalia, things could get ugly, especially if he had any of the vamps’ previous potion left in his system.

  “Bobby,” I said softly. “Powers again?”

  “I’m working on it, but whatever they’ve wedged the door shut with is in good.”

  “Sure,” I said to Red, nearly choking on my sweetness. “You try it. You’re probably a lot stronger than me.”

  He preened like a peacock and strutted up the stairs, which was not nearly as easy as it sounds. No wonder he was a jock, with coordination like that.

  I stepped aside, pressing myself against the wall to allow Red to take his aggressions out on the door. Maybe it would save us some trouble down the line.

  Bobby’s eyes met mine, and I felt another blast of power leave him, blow through the door, and slam something against a far wall. Whatever had been jamming the door shut?

  Red took the nod Bobby gave me as a cue to take his turn on the door. He started a step down, hand on the knob so he could turn it and ram the door at the same time. He almost fell through it, which made Bobby and me look like weenies, but, hey, it worked.

  “Bring a bunch of beer back down with you,” one of his friends called. “We’re getting low.”

  But I wasn’t sure Red was going to get the chance. Rick stood in the kitchen, staring fixedly at us. I couldn’t tell a thing from his expression. Bella was nowhere in sight, but neither was the sun. The door had delayed us just long enough for full dark to fall. We were out of time.

  17

  Quick, where’s Bella?” Bobby asked. “We have to stop this before it goes any further.”

  Rick raised his gaze to the guy behind us—Red.

  “Will you do the honors?” he asked.

  Red stepped more fully into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. He locked it while Bobby and I stared, stunned stupid.

  “What?” Rick asked, an evil grin from ear to ear. “You thought I was on your side? Please. The only thing you’ve ever gotten me is trouble—and a crappy government job.”

  I still didn’t know if it was Rick or some kind of mind-control speaking, but I saw Red. Literally. He reached for the wedge to jam the door shut again, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  I flew into action, launching myself at Red as Bobby went for Rick. One good kick sent the wedge somersaulting across the kitchen. Red whirled toward the counter, looking for the knife block that was next to the stove. I was too fast for him and got there first. I didn’t really need a blade to do damage, but I knew from experience that some guys wouldn’t take a girl seriously unless she had a weapon, especially when he topped her by nearly a foot.

  I pulled out the blade with the biggest handle, and it was a nasty-looking thing—very sharp and pointy, blade as smooth as glass.

  Red’s eyes went super-sized. “Where’s Bella?” I asked, holding the knife hip height for me, which put it right about level with his twig and berries. He winced.

  “Where are you releasing the gas?” I continued, giving the point of the knife an experimental twitch in threat. I didn’t turn to look at the thrashing off to the side. I trusted Bobby to handle Rick-the-rat.

  Sweat popped out on Red’s brow and his face began to live up to his nickname. “You can’t stop it. It’s already done.”

  “What? I don’t smell anything.” And with my super-vamp senses, you’d think I would.

  “No? Apples and cinnamon?”

  “It’s in the air freshener!” Crap on a cracker. We were too late. Now that I knew, it made total sense. There hadn’t been any outbreaks of violence of any kind at this party—it seemed like the perfected formula made the peeps not just suggestible, but docile. The psycho-psychic had it right. Rasputin and Company were aiming for sheep.

  Lily, Gavin, Byron … I only hoped Ulric had enough of himself left, even under the influence, to lead them to safety.

  “Where’s Bella?” I demanded again.

  I heard a crash in the basement and realized we’d been had. While Red and Rick kept us busy upstairs, the vile vamps had come in through the other basement door.

  I felt Bobby send forth a blast of power, but it seemed to blow back on us, nearly rolling my eyes back in their sockets.

  “It’s not possible!” Bobby gasped, releasing Rick’s collar and letting him slump to the floor.

  “What?” I asked, afraid I already knew.

  “I’ve only felt that once before. Rasputin. If my power’s blown, it can only mean he’s back.”

  Heck with the cracker—the crap was totally hitting the fan. Raspy had slipped Alistaire’s grip, and it seemed Rick had truly gone over to the dark side. We had no defense. They’d know we were Feds, know we’d have back-up, which, come to think of it, they’d already taken out once, back at the morgue. We couldn’t count on Sid and Maya to have our backs. And without them to call in the strike team … I just had to hope there was some fallback in place.

  Red made a move while I was distracted, and instinctively I flashed out with the knife. His blood spurted like a geyser and he fell against the beautiful breakfast bar, holding his innards, well, in.

  “You cut me,” he said in disbelief.

  “You’re shocked by this?”

  Bobby delivered a boot to Rick’s head, which put him over the edge into oblivion so he couldn’t do any more damage. “Let’s go!” Bobby said.

  “You circle the house and sneak in behind them, through the other basement door. I’ve got this one.”

  Bobby nodded and was off like a shot.

  For once, I curbed my impulse to fly into action and forced myself to think. Plotting didn’t exactly come naturally to me, but fear was a great motivator. Raspy alone was way more powerful than me. Apparently, more powerful even than Alistaire. And he had minions of both the fanged and the fresh-blooded variety. An entire houseful, if I didn’t get a move on.

  It came to me in a flash. Actually, Bella’d given me the idea, poisoning me with garlic. What better place to find garlic than a kitchen. Turn about was totally fair play. I blew through the place like a tornado, opening doors and drawers until I found what I was looking for—plastic sandwich bags, garlic powder, and cooking oil. I used two of the baggies on my hands so I wouldn’t burn myself, poured oil into the other bags, then divided the garlic powder among them. I shook them up for good measure. Garlic bombs. Hopefully enough to save us.

  I tucked the bags into my shirt and dashed for the door downstairs. It opened onto eerie quiet. No party sounds. No laughter or shrieks or scuffling. I could only see a bit of the room from the top of the stairs—the backs of people’s heads. Someone had their attention. Their total, exclusive attention.

  “Come, milaya, join us,” Raspy’s accented voice called up to me. There was power behind it. Force. I could feel it the way I could feel Bobby’s, but all it did was wash over me, dimpling my skin.

  Still, I descended a few stairs, the better to see the big picture. Kids were frozen, seemingly in whatever position Raspy’s retinue had caught them in. Among them walked two vamps I didn’t recognize, but they had that arrogant air of council.

  I looked beyond them to the other door, where Raspy and his entourage stood just inside, Bella-the-betrayer behind them.

  As I watched, Rasputin said, quietly but with power, “Come,”
indicating with a curl of his fingers the front line of kids, Ulric among them. Ulric stepped forward just as readily as the others. Teresa, Tyler, Grunge, and Raspy each grabbed one of the waiting victims and bit down on their necks.

  The advantage of garlic bombs over gunfire was that I didn’t have to worry about collateral damage. Any humans hit would be stinky, but no more. I pulled the first two bags out of my shirt and launched them at Raspy and Grunge. I hit Teresa and some random kid, but there was enough splatter that two out of the four villain vamps raised fangs to hiss at me.

  The council vamps, however, were closing in. “Freeze!” one ordered. Apparently, he hadn’t gotten the memo on my full mental measure of ornery.

  Needless to say, I didn’t freeze. Two more garlic grenades were already incoming. Both hit the mouthy one dead center of the chest—either luck was with me or my aim was getting better. Loud Mouth screamed and flailed at his clothes like he was on fire. The nearest kids seemed to shrink away fractionally, as if the commotion was breaking through their programming. But not enough to free them. Not really.

  The vamp I’d hit had his shirt off now, flung down at his feet. Even though his chest still smoked, he was coming at me. But I had another two baggies in hand. There were only about four more in my shirt—at this rate, I was going to run out of ammunition before I ran out of targets. I needed a back-up plan.

  I launched the two bags I had in hand, one at each of the onrushing council vamps. One went wide, but the other stopped Loud Mouth’s friend just long enough for me to whip my head around looking for a new weapon. But I was stuck on a staircase … a wooden staircase.

  I threw myself on the railing, trying to rip it out of the wall as Loud Mouth reached me and went for my knees, taking them out from under me. I kept hold of the wooden rail and it came down with me. All of it. Not just handy stake-sized fragments. I used it as a club to beat the side of the baddy’s head.

  From across the room came a second crash, like the rail coming down, only different. I looked up to see the door behind Raspy being busted in. By Bobby … and he had back-up. I gave a whoop of triumph, which ended in a howl of pain.

  In my distraction, someone had stabbed deep into my thigh. I looked down into the feral face of council vamp number two—he’d uprooted one of the uprights left behind when I’d ripped out the rail and impaled me with it. It was a good thing his partner was still lying half across my stomach and chest, concussed from my bludgeoning, or I’d have been a goner. The stake would have been aimed at something a lot more vital.

  But even as I thought this, searing pain tunneled my vision. My hands tightened convulsively on my wooden club and I swung it toward the vamp, putting all the pain and outrage I felt into the blow. I knocked him to the ground, and I tried to throw his partner off me, but it was no good. I’d used up the last of my strength.

  All I could do was sit and watch as Bobby grabbed Raspy and thrust him away from his victim. Raspy thrashed at Bobby with his teeth, but Bobby nearly punched them out. I was so proud I could almost burst … until Raspy recovered and his gaze met Bobby’s. Bobby went as still as death, and fear stabbed me at least as hard as the stupid council vamp.

  The strike team was busy with Teresa, Tyler, and Grunge, trusting Bobby to take care of Raspy. They didn’t immediately notice the change.

  “Attack!” Rasputin ordered him. Bobby didn’t have my resistance to mesmerism—he was either about to do something he’d never forgive himself for, like kill his own strike-team members, or go down himself. I couldn’t let it happen.

  Rasputin turned his gaze back to the rest of the kids, who were shifting, restless, but hadn’t yet broken free of his control. “All of you, attack the newcomers!” he ordered.

  As one, the kids converged on the strike team.

  Crap on a crispy, crumbly cracker.

  One more time I tried, summoning up all the strength I could. For Bobby. For Ulric and Lily and all the others. I went for the stake this time, hoping that if I could pull the wood from my body, my strength would return.

  Grunting with the huge effort, I yanked. The stake slid free with a sound I hoped never to hear again, a wet tearing sound, almost like the time I’d had to wrestle with a pool filter over my bikini top, only much, much worse.

  Strength didn’t exactly return in force, but my vision expanded once again so that I could see exactly how much trouble we were in. The kids … and Bobby … overwhelmed the strike team, which had disappeared beneath their onslaught. Raspy was coming right at me.

  I pushed the council creep off my lap, and he rolled down the stairs. Raspy took them two at a time, vaulting his downed comrade to clutch my neck with his crazy, clawlike hands. I didn’t need to breathe, but his nails were piercing my skin. If he hit my jugular or whatever … if I lost my remaining blood … he could probably rip my head clean off before I could summon the strength to fight back. It was now or never.

  I brought my knee up in the move every girl knows from the age of five, maybe earlier. Just like any other man, Raspy winced. He lost a little height as he curled around his battered bits, but he didn’t let go of me. In fact, his eyes flared blood red in the way I’d seen Alistaire’s do when he was feeling especially psychotic.

  I didn’t want to have to do it, but he gave me no choice. There was nothing left but the foolproof grab and twist. And I really didn’t want to grab.

  Steeling myself much like I had with the stake, I went for him, grabbed his tortured testes in my hand and squeezed. His eyes went supernova, but his control was inhuman. Instead of just releasing me, he flung me across the room. A couple of bodies broke my fall and lay there looking dazed, like I’d knocked the sense out of them … or maybe back in.

  Raspy leapt down after me, and I momentarily thought about trying to turn the army to me, but that would mean using them as human cannon fodder. Raspy wouldn’t hesitate to go through them to get to me. But what if I could turn them from attack to stampede?

  It was worth a try. I took a mega breath, filling my lungs to full capacity and focusing all the power I might possibly have, and shouted at the top of my voice, “Out, now! Everybody, upstairs. This way!”

  I bolted for the stairway. Right at Raspy. I might get trampled, but at least I wouldn’t be alone. I didn’t have a millisecond to spare to look behind me before I was clashing again with the Mad Monk. “Mad” didn’t even do him justice. He was furious, his eyes practically burning holes through mine, drilling into my head.

  Then I was jostled from behind. Then pushed, my feet actually skidding forward toward the stairs. Raspy’s feet got tangled with mine and we both went down, me falling on top of him like an inhuman shield as the kids trampled over us, stampeding more like cattle than sheep, crushing my vertebrae.

  For a minute or more all I knew was pain, and when it finally ended, I couldn’t have moved if I’d been goosed. But the kids were up and out of danger. At least—

  • • •

  A pair of hands grabbed me by the shoulders and I didn’t even have enough left in me to panic. Gently, they turned me over, cuddling me into a body. I blinked slowly to clear the haze from my eyes and met Bobby’s baby blues.

  I had to wet my mouth to speak. “You’re alive,” I said. It wasn’t much more than a breath, really, hardly an actual sound.

  “In a manner of speaking anyway. Are you okay?” He stroked the hair away from my face, so, so gently.

  I coughed, and it killed. “I think my back is broken.” But I didn’t want to dwell on that or the worry that it was too much to heal and that I might come out looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I looked around, but my head didn’t want to turn. Just my eyes moved. Rasputin was still right there, a hand’s breath from me, only my hands weren’t working. He wasn’t moving, which was really strange, since my body should have sheltered him from the worst.

  “Is he … faking?” I asked Bobby.

  He shifted minutely, as careful as possible not to hurt me as he reached for R
aspy, but still, I heard bones grind together in my back and a wave of nausea washed over me. He poked the Mad Monk, and his body rocked just enough to give us a glimpse of the stake I’d yanked from my leg and thrust aside—it was now buried in Raspy’s back. What were the odds? Poetic justice that I’d actually beaten him with his own weapons. Byron would like that.

  “Leave me here,” I ordered Bobby. “Lock down the baddies, see to the others. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You need blood.”

  “After,” I said. My eyes wanted to close, but I didn’t dare let them until Bobby did what I said. Otherwise, I was afraid he wouldn’t leave my side.

  I waited until he gently laid me back on the floor and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll be right back.”

  He got those crappy zip-tie cuffs off the fallen strike team, and I passed out in relief.

  18

  It was really, really short-lived relief. Pain shocked me awake. Someone was trying to twist me like taffy.

  My eyes shot open and I stared into the dark brown eyes of a man in face paint—the stealth kind of paint, I guessed, because it sure didn’t do a thing for him otherwise.

  “I’ve got you,” Bobby said. I turned to look into his much nicer baby blues, which, weirdly, glistened with a single red tear on the verge of spilling over. “Just squeeze my hand when it hurts. Blade says he’s got to straighten you out or you’ll heal wrong.”

  Like Alistaire healed, I thought, just as—Blade?—gave another twist and all I could think of was Holy Freakin’ Mother of God make it STOP!

  When I could speak again, I sought out those brown eyes. “I hate you,” I said.

  “I can live with that,” Blade answered. He had almost a bluesy voice, the kind that sounded like it was just about to give out. Rough, like a hundred miles of bad road, and low like low-rise jeans. If he hadn’t just tortured me, it might have given me a little thrill.

  Blade, as good as his name, pulled out a knife, did a little flip thing with his wrist to free the blade and cut himself where the sleeve of his shirt had been pulled back above his gloves.