Third Strike

by Heather Brewer

  Joss swallowed hard in realization.

  Sirus. Sirus was still alive. Did Kat know? Did she have any idea?

  She traced a heart on the back of Henry’s right hand with her finger. Her nails were painted in purple glitter polish. “Sorry.”

  The look on Henry’s face said that he forgave her immediately.

  “I have to use the restroom.” Henry slid out of the booth and pointed a warning finger straight at Joss. “Be careful what you do.”

  Joss felt his face flush red. Henry might as well have screamed at him not to make out with Kat while he was gone. As if Joss wanted anything to do with that activity.

  Betraying him, Joss’s eyes traced a line from Kat’s sparkling eyes down her cheekbone to her lips.

  No. He didn’t want anything to do with Kat in that way. They were once friends, now enemies. Besides, there was a girl in pink who lived in Bathory that Joss couldn’t get out of his mind. He had to focus on that girl, not this one. This one wasn’t good for him. This one was trouble.

  He didn’t respond to Henry at all, just dropped his gaze to the table and tried to keep it there. After Henry had gone, Kat gestured to the seat across from her and said, “You might as well sit down.”

  He stood there stubbornly for a moment, silently debating whether or not sitting in a booth with Kat could be considered fraternizing with the enemy. Once he decided that it was more like reconnaissance than anything, he slid into Henry’s seat and looked at her. “What are you doing here exactly, Kat?”

  “You know why I’m here, Joss. It’s time for me to get revenge for what you took from me. For what you did to Sirus.” When she uttered her father’s name, the strength that seemed to ebb from her faltered. Her voice shook as she spoke it aloud, evidence of the pain that she must still be feeling. Pain that Joss had never intended to cause.

  Without thinking, he reached across the table and cupped her hand in his. To his amazement, she didn’t pull away. “Listen, Kat. About Sirus—”

  “Help!” A woman burst through the doors into the café, a panicked look in her eye, drawing the attention of every person in the café—even Henry, who’d just then exited the restroom. Her chest was rising and falling in quick breaths, as if she’d been running. “A man needs help! Somebody call an ambulance—a man was just attacked!”

  No one in the café moved—no one but Joss, who jumped up from his seat and hurried outside, pushing past the people who were frozen in shock that something violent had just occurred in their vicinity. As he moved out the door, he saw a man in his midtwenties lying on the ground in a pool of blood, his skin paling as the seconds ticked by, his neck bleeding profusely. He was losing blood. A lot of blood. And if someone didn’t do something quickly, the man was going to die.

  Joss pulled his overshirt off and knelt beside the wounded man, pressing his shirt into the man’s neck. Keeping pressure on it might be enough to save him, but not without professional help. He looked at one of the onlookers and made sure the man met his eyes. Then, calmly but firmly, said, “You. Call an ambulance right now. Tell them this man has had his carotid artery severed and has lost a lot of blood. They need to hurry.”

  The man nodded and pulled out his cell phone. Once he’d dialed and was actually speaking to someone, Joss relaxed a bit. That was the thing about people in a crisis situation. No one would take responsibility unless you handed it to them.

  His overshirt had soaked through, but he kept the pressure on. The man’s face was turning white. With one hand keeping pressure on the wound, Joss removed his T-shirt with his other hand, pulling it off over his head. He pressed it into the overshirt as hard as he could without strangling the poor man.

  A group of people was gathering and chatter moved like a wave through the crowd, but Joss didn’t take any of it in. The woman who’d entered the café had come back outside and was standing beside the man, ringing her hands in worry. Joss met her eyes and spoke calmly. “Did you see who did this?”

  “Hard to remember. It’s all a blur.” She shook her head, looking very much as if she felt she wasn’t being much help at all. What she didn’t realize was that she’d just told Joss some pretty key information about the attack. She had difficulty remembering the face, which suggested mind control. Which meant that it was a vampire that had attacked this man, further evidenced by the gushing neck wound. Messy, messy, messy.

  A man in a tan polo shirt stepped forward and said, “Whatever it was that got him ran down the boardwalk and into the woods right after. I saw him. Must have been a psycho or something. Do you think it could be a serial killer?”

  Joss didn’t bother explaining that in order to be a serial killer, there needed to be a series of similar deaths. In the distance, he heard an ambulance siren. He gestured for the man to kneel beside him and then put the man’s hands on the T-shirt in place of his own. “Keep pressure on this. And keep people away from the woods. Where exactly did you see the attacker go?”

  “Across the street from the boardwalk entrance, straight into the trees. Be careful, kid. Maybe you should wait for the authorities.” The man’s eyes widened, and Joss nodded in response. He wasn’t about to tell the guy that when it came to vampire attacks, he was one of the authorities.

  He hurried away from the scene, down the boardwalk. As he moved, the ambulance passed him, and he hoped they’d be able to save the victim. It was only then that it occurred to him that his stake had been exposed to all of the people on the scene. He wondered if any of them saw it there on his hip, and if they had any idea what it was. Once he reached the end of the boardwalk, he stepped into the woods and slipped his stake from the holster, ready for anything.

  He hoped, anyway.

  The woods seemed eerily still as he slowly made his way deeper inside. No birds sang songs above him in the trees. No breeze rustled the leaves overhead. No woodland creatures stirred in the undergrowth. It seemed to be just Joss in the woods, nothing more. But he knew that was not true.

  Joss scanned the area around him, and as he turned his head to the right, he saw it. That vital piece of evidence that he’d been looking for. That thing that told him that he was on the right path to locating whoever—or whatever—had attacked that man on the boardwalk. On the leaf of a low-growing fern, there on the forest floor, was a single, fresh droplet of blood.

  He knelt beside it to get a better look. There was no denying how fresh it was, but he could only guess that it had come from the wounded man. He only hoped that the attacker hadn’t been Sirus. But there was only one way to find out. Standing, his fingers gripping his stake, Joss straightened his shoulders and called out, “Sirus? It’s Joss.”

  There was a slight breeze, barely enough to move a few of Joss’s hairs out of his eyes. He might not have noticed it, except there had been nothing before it at all, giving weight to the action. Suddenly, a vampire was standing just inches from him, staring him down with a gleam in his eye that suggested that he was hungry, or angry, or both. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Joss. But I’m not Sirus.”

  Joss tried to bring his stake up, but the beast moved with that unbelievable vampire speed again, grabbing Joss by the wrist that held the stake. He shook his head slowly. “You don’t want to start anything with me, boy. Trust me.”

  As quickly as he could move, Joss rolled his wrist to the outside, breaking the vampire’s grip. He brought the stake around, aiming for its chest, but as he did so, the vampire swore. It shoved Joss hard, sending him flying. A moment later, Joss struck a tree’s trunk with his back. When he hit, his lungs seized momentarily, knocking the wind from him. At the same time, his hand opened, releasing the stake. It fell to the ground, but Joss had no idea where. As his body collapsed to the forest floor, he searched, but it was gone. He was unarmed and completely unsure of how he was going to get out of this situation.

  The nameless vampire jumped, coming at him, but Joss
rolled to his right before springing to his feet. As he did, he turned and brought his foot up, roundhouse kicking the creature in the side. The force of his kick sent the surprised vampire into a nearby tree. Thinking quickly, Joss grabbed it by the shoulder and threw it into another tree.

  Only the vampire was thinking quicker.

  With surprising grace, it planted its feet on the tree trunk and ran up the side of the tree before flipping over and landing behind Joss. As Joss turned to face it, the creature caught him with a right hook. As its fist met with Joss’s cheek, it felt like his head had exploded. Pain vibrated through his skull. But he wasn’t going to let pain stand in his way.

  Joss spun around, backhanding the beast. As it stumbled, Joss caught it in the ribs with his knee. The vampire tumbled to the ground, where Joss kicked it hard in the side. Angrily, it shouted up at him, “Stop, Joss! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

  Miraculously, his stake was lying right beside the vampire. Joss grabbed it and raised it in the air as quickly as he could. “For you, Cecile.”

  He planted his stake hard in the vampire’s chest. The vampire screamed, clutching at the wood, his eyes full of disbelief. Then, as the light was leaving its eyes, it said, “Be careful, little Slayer. I’m not the worst thing in these woods.”

  Joss sat back, panting from their fight. He was about to ask the vampire what it had meant, when he realized that it was dead. He looked around the woods, with the question instead in his eyes.

  10

  CAUGHT IN THE ACT

  Joss had no idea how he was supposed to request a cleanup without a cell phone, but it was probably a good idea that he stop by Paty’s house on the way home to report in. He was hoping that maybe Paty had a shirt he could wear as well, and that maybe she wouldn’t mind if he took a shower there. As Joss freed his stake from the vampire’s corpse, he heard a sound. Spinning around, he was ready for anything. But what he saw was his cousin Henry, standing there staring at him in disbelief and horror. Not two steps behind him was Kat, looking just a little bit smug and a little bit sad.

  Joss had no idea what to say. He couldn’t explain the vampire’s death any more than he could explain why he was holding the stake. And he certainly hadn’t wanted his cousin to see him like this. It was one thing for Henry to know that Joss was a Slayer. It was a quite another for him to see Joss in action, or at least in the immediate aftermath of a takedown.

  Henry stepped forward and looked from Joss to the vampire and back. At first, Joss thought he was going to say something about what a horrible thing it was that Joss had done, or that maybe he’d ask Joss if the vampire had attacked him. But Henry reacted in a way that, for whatever reason, Joss hadn’t been expecting.

  Without a word, Henry drew his arm back and punched Joss in the gut. Hard. It hurt, but Joss’s Slayer instincts were stronger than pain. Before he knew it, he had Henry by the wrist, twisted around, and pinned with his face against a tree. Kat beat at his back, screaming, “Stop it! You’ll break his arm, Joss!”

  With a shaking breath, Joss released his cousin and stepped back in utter shock at his own actions. He hadn’t meant to grab Henry like that. Who knows what he might have done if Kat hadn’t stopped him?

  “Henry, are you okay? Did he hurt you?” Kat looked over Henry’s wrist with obvious upset. She glared at Joss and tried to gently coax Henry away. “Come on. We need to get that checked out right away. It might be broken. I can’t believe you call that guy your friend. Family’s one thing, but who does that to a friend?”

  Henry cradled his wrist in his hand, his fingers paling and shaking slightly. Joss wondered if it really was broken. Henry shouted back to Joss, who was standing beside the vampire’s corpse in a daze. “You’re a monster, Joss! You know that?”

  And Joss did. He did know that. He was a monster.

  But at least the people of Santa Carla were safe now.

  The last thing Henry said to him before disappearing with Kat was softer spoken, but still immeasurably angry. “I can’t believe you did this.”

  Joss couldn’t help but feel like Kat had gotten what she wanted for the moment. With a deep sigh, he looked slowly around at the forest that surrounded him, slipping his stake back into the leather holster on his hip with complete disregard of the blood that was still coating its surface. One thought played on repeat in his mind: The thing about monsters is that there’s always something worse out there.

  11

  CURIOSITY AND THE CAT

  Joss stood still with his thoughts, going over in his mind what had just transpired, for several minutes after doing what he could to hide the vampire’s remains until a Slayer Society cleanup crew could step in and take care of things. He’d covered the body with fallen leaves, fallen branches, and hoped that no human would find it. Death wasn’t something that humans typically dealt well with. It also wasn’t, Joss thought, something that Slayers dealt with either. The distinction in his mind between human and Slayer had come suddenly, but it seemed to fit. He didn’t feel like a human half the time. He felt like something that operated on the fringe of humanity.

  He moved through the woods for almost a half mile before exiting, not wanting anyone who had been at the boardwalk to see him and wonder why he was spattered with fresh blood and who that blood might belong to. He didn’t go home. Too many questions were waiting for him there. Questions that his parents might ask about why he was shirtless and bloody. Questions that Henry might ask about why Joss would do something like that to his cousin, to his blood brother.

  Blood. There was too much blood in Joss’s life.

  Still dazed by what had just happened, Joss found himself standing in front of Paty’s small cottage. After all, she was supposed to be there for him—and if all that meant was that she’d loan him her shower and maybe a fresh shirt, that was enough. It was all Joss needed at the moment. And what he definitely didn’t need were questions.

  He raised his fist to rap on the door, but before he could speak a word, Paty called from within, her voice soft and ragged, as if she’d been crying. “It’s open, Joss. Come on in.”

  As he turned the knob and pushed, he leaned in and saw her face. Her eyes were red, her cheeks blotched. Paty had been crying. It was a strange thing to see. Paty didn’t cry. She was tough. What could break someone like her? He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “Everything okay?”

  Her brows came together as she gave him a once-over. As she spoke, she moved toward him, her eyes full of concern. “Seems like I should be the one asking that. What happened? Are you hurt?”

  Joss shook his head and held a hand up, stopping her approach. With the other hand, he gestured to the burgundy flakes that had dried all over his chest and stomach. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Hardly any of it is my blood.”

  Paty paused midstep, folded her arms in front of her, and raised an eyebrow. Her eyes were no longer red, her tears moving so quickly into the past that Joss began to wonder whether or not he had imagined them. “Tell me what isn’t yours belongs to that little weenie that runs the comic book shop.”

  A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who didn’t care for Edgar Frog. “No such luck. I stumbled on a vampire attack and took care of business. I did my best to hide the body, but I need a cleanup. Redwood State Park. East side, about a hundred yards in.”

  “On it.” Paty grabbed her phone off the counter and hit number two on speed dial. After giving directions to the mysterious voice on the other end, she hit End and turned back to Joss. “Do you think this vampire might be the one responsible for the recent deaths?”

  Truth be told, Joss didn’t want to think much about his Slayer responsibilities at the moment. What he really wanted was to take a hot shower, put on a clean shirt, and then maybe rewind a few years, back to when he and Henry were friends and brothers. But he knew that that would never happen. Time
only ever marched forward, no matter how hard you pushed back.

  “Not really. I have an idea who . . .” He bit the inside of his cheek for a moment, hoping that Paty either wouldn’t notice that he’d just referred to a vampire as a person rather than a thing. His uncle Abraham would have punished him for a slipup like that for sure. “. . . what might be responsible, but I don’t know how to say it. Between you and me, Paty, I don’t really want to say it at all.”

  The last sentence came out in a whisper, and when it did, Joss’s heart reached out after it, but only managed to grab air. He knew better than to say things like that. He knew better than to ever admit to anything at all like that. Especially to another Slayer. The punishment of withholding information from a fellow member of the Society could be severe.

  But this wasn’t just any member of the Society, he told himself. This was Paty. If he could trust any member of his team, it was her.

  She tilted her head to the side curiously. “Who?”

  There was that word again. Who. This time Paty had said it. Which might mean that they were both sharing the same questions about whether vampires were people or things. Or maybe he was just reading too much into it . . . which was likely the case.

  Joss wet his lips and met Paty’s eyes, hoping that she wouldn’t freak out the way that he’d felt like freaking out when he’d found out that Sirus was still alive. After taking a slow, deep breath, he released it in words that felt almost too intense to be spoken aloud. They were life-changing words. And Joss didn’t feel important enough to be changing anyone’s life. “I think . . . that maybe Sirus is the vampire responsible for the deaths. Paty . . . he didn’t die in that explosion. I just saw him the other day. Sirus is still alive.”