by L.J. Hayward
Chapter 10
What are the odds? My back up plan worked. And I didn’t even have to fail at Plan A first. It’s nights like this when I should go buy a lotto ticket. I just had to get through the negotiation first.
“A deal?” I spent a moment pretending to mull it over, but really cataloguing the weapons I carried. “Why?”
Big Red took a step toward me. By golly, he was good enough to get a sweeping flare from his coat with that simple a movement.
“You have something we desire.”
I patted myself down. “Nope, no bags of spare blood tonight.” And all my weapons just where I remembered putting them.
“You need not fear. We have all fed sufficiently.”
“Phew, that’s a relief. Now you can just beat me up for sport.”
Aurum would have smiled tolerantly. Big Red just growled. A deep, throaty sound that should only ever be heard on the plains of the Serengeti while you’re safely tucked away in a big old photo safari bus. Every nerve in my body screamed ‘Fight or flight, preferably flight!’ If that wasn’t bad enough, it brought with it the sensation of cold electricity generated by the presence of huge supernatural badness. It crawled across my skin, prickled my hair and crept in through every—and I mean every—orifice to sink into my guts and veins and muscles, steeling strength. There was such a rush of cab sav flavour through my head I could have got drunk off it. Big Red’s eyes flashed silver.
“I have already stated we came to talk.”
I was immune to Mercy’s psychic compulsion and sort of immune to that of other vampires. This, however, was not a compulsion. It was a real, physical effect and no psychic ability could stop it. Even the dumb ‘animals’ of the supernatural world could produce this. It became a mind over matter issue.
I could lick this.
Pulling in a deep breath, I said, “Then stop the games and talk. You may have eaten tonight, but I’ve only had some Cheetos. Hardly nutritional enough to constitute a decent meal. If I hit a sugar low, I get cranky.”
Big Red hissed, but pulled back on the special effects. “You have something we want. If you give it to us, we will not kill you.”
The snort was out before I could think even once. “Dude, that’s hardly an incentive. I’m not exactly defenceless here. Remember what you just called me? The Night Caller? The death of your kind? Hmm?”
“You do not have the crippled one with you. You are vulnerable.”
Mercy? Crippled? Oookay.
“I’ve taken down your kind without her help before.”
“Young ones, yes.”
He had a point. Bastard. Once a vampire gets its maturity on, they get a lot tougher, more ammo in the psychic locker. Until they attack, you can’t really tell how strong they are. Though right about now, I was thinking this ability to string together coherent sentences was another yardstick I could use. When she wasn’t sulking, Mercy could be quite eloquent, but I’d already established she was far from normal.
Wigged out or not by Big Red’s mad word skills, I wasn’t about to let him know that. I lifted one eyebrow and regarded him blandly. “Still, not a very enticing offer. What else you got?”
“I have been instructed to offer you protection from the other castes as well as your life. We will ensure that no other vampire kills you.”
“Let me guess. I won’t be able to continue being the Night Caller, though.”
“You may. Your targets would be the other castes, and you would fight alongside us.”
“Alongside you. Brothers in arms. Right.” The laugh came out with as much pre-thought as the snort had. “So, let me get this right. I give you this thing you want, and I can either retire from the field in all good faith and no one will come assassinate me. Or, I give you this thing and join the ranks of the fashion victim vampires.”
“Or you don’t give us what we desire, you die, and we take it anyway.”
“Crap, man. This is so clichéd. You’re bargaining with me even while boasting that you don’t have to. You know, a fella could get to thinking that you don’t really want to kill him at all.”
Big Red opened his mouth to respond. I held up a hand to stop him.
“Not yet, Watson. Holmes is still deducing. And the answer is… There’s two things I have that you want. One you can’t get if I’m dead.” I tapped my head. “Which means it’s in here. Which means it’s probably got something to do with the other thing you want.”
Slowly, deliberately, I reached into the big pocket on my left hip and withdrew the Eagle.
“And you ain’t getting either of those things.”
I shot Big Red before any of us could think. He screamed as his face started to smoke. I spun and laid down a ring of paintballs, keeping the others back. It wouldn’t last long, but long enough for me to get another weapon.
There’s this little church tucked away between a couple of big high rises in the middle of the city. In that church, is a little Father who doesn’t ask too many questions. He ladles out the Holy water for me, and he blessed my nightstick.
Three vampires closed on me.
I shot one and whacked the nightstick across another’s face. Neither was enough to take them out of the fight, but it gave me room to get a clumsy hold on the third coming up from behind, toss him over my shoulder and land kneeling on his chest. I unloaded three paintballs into his mouth and rolled off him in time to miss a clawed hand slashed at neck height.
I ended up between Big Red’s legs. Face sizzling, he glared down at me, eyes silver. He roared and reached for me. I had a split second to think ‘gun or stick?’ I rammed the nightstick into the bastard’s balls. Yup. Vampire balls still work and that makes them vulnerable. Big Red doubled up. I thrust up with my hips, got my calves around his neck and dropped. He came over like a freaking freight train. What can I say? Life is all about balance. You don’t got it, you gonna go down.
Sadly, he went down on my left knee. Something akin to lightning slashed my leg. I growled, the only sound I could manage. That was the level of the pain.
A vampire grabbed my jacket and ripped me out from under Big Red. I popped a paintball in Red’s neck on my way past, though. Take that. I was tossed back to the ground. My sight whited out for a second, then it came back red.
Pain? What was that? Something I was going to dish out to these bastards.
I rolled and flipped to my feet. Gun and stick still in hand, I turned on the remaining creatures. Four left. No great numbers advantage. Pity for them.
We closed. I spun the stick through a three-sixty and brought it across the face of one of them. I shoved the Eagle in another’s chest and tore a hole halfway to his spine. One of them bit down on my gun arm. She slashed her head from side to side, clawing at my belly and face with her hands. The gun flew out of my grip. I slammed the stick down on her head. Another one landed on my back. I went down under them.
The next thing I remember was standing in the middle of the stinking remains. My body was trying to haul in enough air to kick start my brain. I bled from I didn’t want know how many wounds.
How many coats? One, two, three… My vision blurred out of focus. No. Don’t fall over. Are they all down? That’s the issue with going berserk. You don’t often remember what happened. Did I get them all or not?
Pain lanced up my left leg. I collapsed on the spot, right into a steaming puddle. Didn’t care. Everything went intensely bright with the pain. The edges of my vision hazed out. All I could see was a circle of night sky, stars twinkling, a few branches waving at me from on high. All I could feel was the fire eating me from the leg upwards. The sound of traffic boomed too loud, then faded.
A face came into my line of sight. A young woman, pale and concerned. She said something. Couldn’t hear it. Could see her though. She tried to hide it, but I saw them. The fangs flashing between her lips. She saw the truth in me. Her eyes went silver and her lips peeled back, no subterfuge now. She lunged toward my neck.
Her teet
h scored my throat, then stopped. She stiffened, back arched in pain. Predator eyes wide, she looked at her chest.
My SAS knife was suck to the hilt between her breasts.
Some of the legendary things really do work against vampires. Garlic. Holy anything. Ye olde stake through the heart, too. But it doesn’t have to be wood. Pierce just about anything’s heart with anything long enough to get in there and it kills them.
I kicked her off and suffered through her dying stench. The ground felt really nice. Just like a bed. So comfortable.
No. Get up. Get away.
Nah. Passing out always feels good. Let’s do that.
What if there are more vampires?
Mate, you’re the Night Caller. You got them all. How could you not?
Because you’re delusional and I’m in some freaking mind bending pain. Lord, it could even make me start talking to myself.
Somehow, I rolled over. My knee protested somewhat.
Go to your Zen place, go to your Zen place.
Right now, my Zen place was somewhere with a truck load of painkillers. And what do you know, I was right outside a hospital.
ED was around the back. I was closer to the front. No way was I getting that far, so I hauled my protesting leg to the front door and through a monumental amount of searing agony, hit the—oh so appropriately called—night call button.
I passed out before anyone came to the door. I woke up when they lifted me onto the stretcher though. I think I woke up the whole hospital, in fact. It alerted them pretty quick to the whole knee situation, which was helpful. I was once again thankful it was a slow night for the ED staff. I would have hated being passed over for some other poor sot.
An hour or two later, doped out of my head on some serious shit, I could sit up and chat.
“Man, you should bottle this stuff and sell it,” I said to Dr Nolan, who was looking over my knee.
Given a choice, I wouldn’t have accepted the morphine. It was the Devil in a liquid state. Nasty stuff. Heaven in a bag. Pure bliss in a jab. After getting out of hospital I’d sworn to never touch the stuff again. I’d become addicted while recovering, faking major pain when a codeine would have sufficed. Did such a brilliant job of it the doctors wanted to open my knee up again to see what was wrong. Guess I wasn’t as far gone as some, because I didn’t really want more pain in order to warrant the morphine. It was a miracle. The pain got less and less and after a while, I really had forgotten why I thought I needed it so much.
To this day, I think the canny bastard who’d worked on me knew it all along and threatened the surgery to scare me off. It kind of bites that it worked.
But here I was. Surfing the happy wave again. I wasn’t so out of it I couldn’t argue about why I didn’t like the stuff, but I was far enough gone I just didn’t care.
Nolan grinned at me. Young bloke, for a doctor. All doctors should look like that guy who played Dr Who, the one with the curly brown hair and dubious habit of offering strangers jelly babies. Nolan didn’t look like that. He was tall, slender without being skinny, wore torn jeans and an Eskimo Joe T-shirt. I liked him.
“It’s some good stuff, isn’t it,” Nolan said. “What happened to your knee?”
“Smashed it up couple of years ago. That’s a genuine titanium artificial kneecap in there. What can we get for that on the market?”
“Not so much you would make a profit, I’m afraid. We’ll wait for the X-rays to confirm it, but I don’t think anything’s broken. It’ll be inflamed for a while though.” He picked up a clipboard and jotted down a few things. “We’ll get you started on some antibiotics then send you up to the ward. Anyone we can call?”
“Ward? I don’t want to be admitted.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I can’t see you walking out of here any time soon. You got beat up pretty well. Twelve stitches in your arm, four in the back of your head. Some pretty impressive gashes on your chest and back. Not to mention the damage done to your knee.”
“You just said there was nothing broken.”
“I think there’s nothing broken. But you’ve had muscular and tendon damage. That’s going to keep you down for a week or two.”
“But does it have be in here?”
“If you have the insurance, you can be transferred to the private hospital if you wish.”
I grimaced. “And they’re the only options you’re giving me?”
“’Fraid so.”
“Get me a phone then.”
Nolan smiled and stuck his head out of the cubicle to ask a nurse for a phone. “So good of you to cooperate.” He sat in a chair beside the bed, long legs stretched out. “Care to tell me what happened?”
“Told you. Smashed my knee a while back.”
“Tonight. I think we need to call the police. You have bite marks, nail scratches and close to a dozen bruises that aren’t going to fade any time soon. You’re lucky you didn’t come out with any broken ribs. Or a worse head injury. Who did this?”
“Would you believe me if I said vampires?”
I’m going to blame it on the drugs.
Nolan stared at me steadily. And here it comes. The exasperated sigh, the weary shake of the head, the subtle hint that maybe I should have a little chat with this nice lady from the mental health unit, now let me tighten those restraints, for your own protection, of course.
“Did you win?”
Whoa. Did I just hear that right? Yeah, and it wasn’t sarcastic. It was quiet, grim, determined.
“I survived. I guess that means I won.”
Nolan gave a single, sharp nod. “Good. Fucking bastards. I’m getting sick of seeing their leftovers.”
No. This wasn’t happening. He was jerking my numbed up leg. “Are you serious? I mean, you believe in vampires?”
“Hard not to. You see two or three people come through here with puncture marks in their necks or wrists or thighs, with low red cell and haemoglobin counts, you start to wonder.” He shuddered. “The patients talk. They babble, all of it scared. After a while, you can’t put it down to imagination or hallucination. Most people in the ED train themselves to forget about it, to ignore it.”
“Defensive blindness. It’s the only way some people can cope.”
The doc rubbed a tired hand over his face. “Yeah. I guess. Sometimes, it feels like they’re being gutless. But, I go along with it because I like my job.”
I nodded. “Safe path to take.”
“But it doesn’t help you when you’re walking through a dark car park at the end of a long, tiring shift.” He waved toward the array of gear taken out of my pants pockets. “All this works?”
I surveyed the weapons. Nightstick (a lovely nurse had washed it for me), hip flasks of Holy water, a cross, garlic salt (get it in their eyes and hello) and sheathed SAS knife. No Desert Eagle. Probably lost for good.
“Yeah.”
“I have a shopping list then.”
Sheesh. I didn’t want the poor guy to get all Van Helsing on any mugger that jumped out at him. “Listen, I don’t think you have too much to worry about. The ’Cliffe is pretty quiet for these sorts of freaks.”
He cut me a daring glance. “How many jumped you tonight?”
“That doesn’t matter. They were after me specifically. Unless you’ve done something to piss them off, I think you’re okay.”
Nolan sighed and stood up. He was at the opening in the curtain around my cubicle when he said, “I saved your life. I think that might piss them off.”
