“It would have to be a unanimous decision,” I said. “This isn’t exactly an easy thing to think about, especially when James doesn’t know that I--”
“Incoming,” Neko muttered, and we instantly all fell silent.
James came back into the living room with just a slight sniffle, but he had clearly splashed some water on his face to try to get rid of any evidence that he’d been crying. It looked like our discussion of whether to stay or go would have to wait for another time when we were alone, so at least for the moment, we would stay put.
“Sorry about that,” the gray-bearded man said. “So what were we talking about?”
“How do you feel about giving us a little tour of your town?” I asked. “I’m not sure exactly how long we’ll be here, but it wouldn’t hurt for us to get a little more familiar with the area.”
It also wouldn’t hurt for us to get a better idea of what we were up against. If I could see ways to help set up the town’s defenses, then it might be easier for me to decide to stay, but if this shit looked hopeless, then there was no reason to risk all our lives for something that probably wouldn’t work anyway.
“Oh, really?” James smiled. “Shit, I don't think anybody’s ever asked me for a tour of Red House before.”
“I don’t imagine that your tourism industry is exactly, uh, booming,” Catherine snickered.
“Fair enough,” her uncle laughed. “But come on, I’d be happy to show you all around.”
“Should we take Rhino?” Natalie asked.
“No, why don’t we give her a break?” I replied. “Maybe we can take your Jeep, James. If you think it can fit all of us.”
“It’ll be a tight squeeze,” the gray-bearded man said, “but I think we can make it work.”
“Are you sure?” Natalie arched her eyebrow at me. “No offense to the Jeep, but the armored truck is… you know, armored.”
“None of the people in town will shoot at you if you’re with me,” James said. “But I can’t say the same thing would be true if you all rolled into town in a big-ass armored truck.”
“That’s kinda what I thought,” I said.
I also didn’t want to show off the fact that we had an armored truck, just in case we needed to use it as a surprise later. If vamps from Black Betsy had sent a scout up here, then they might do the same thing again, and I didn’t want anyone to report back that there was an armored truck and a bunch of new faces in town. At least in the Jeep, we might pass for locals, so the bloodsuckers from downriver wouldn’t have anything new to report back to their leaders.
James led us back downstairs to his Jeep, but before we got in, I told the girls to each get one additional weapon. There was no reason not to be prepared, just in case we ran into any trouble, so I made sure that they all had a pistol on their hips and a rifle slung over their shoulders.
I grabbed a shotgun for myself, along with my usual handgun, but I also grabbed my Louisville slugger since after everything we had been through together, I was pretty goddamn attached.
James took the wheel of the Jeep, Catherine squeezed into the middle seat beside him, and I took the passenger side up front. The other five girls piled into the back, where there was just enough leg room that they didn’t all have to be right on top of each other.
The armored truck was securely parked and locked, and since I didn’t think anybody would bother it all the way up here, I figured it was alright to leave it for a little bit. Besides, if we were going to make a decision about whether to stay and help Red House or go ahead and get the fuck out of here, we really needed to see the town itself first.
James backed out of his steep driveway and bounced us along the curvy road down the side of the mountain until we pulled back out onto the main road through town. Now that I wasn’t behind the wheel, it gave me a little more of an opportunity to look around and get our bearings.
There was plenty of potential here in terms of defendable locations, but at the same time, I almost wondered if it would just be easier for everybody to pick up and move to a different spot entirely, like some place where there wasn’t a whole town full of bloodsuckers just down the road.
Still, I knew that Catherine was right. James wouldn’t leave his cabin, and I had a feeling that none of the other people in town wanted to leave, either. This was their home, and they’d go down swinging if they had to.
Even if it meant they got turned into vamp food.
As we drove along down the main road, James pointed out different landmarks here and there, but since I didn’t want to write a history of the town, most of them weren’t particularly helpful. I was much more interested in the river that ran along the west side of the town, along with the railroad tracks that ran the length of the town between the road and the river.
James was right that there was no other way in or out of the town, other than the northern and southern ends of this two-lane road, and the fact that there was a mountain on the eastern side of the town was a nice bonus because that meant that Red House was in a perfect valley between a big-ass mountain and a wide-ass river.
So the vamps from the town down south would either have to sneak in over the mountain and through the woods, or they would have to blow into town on the road itself, and that might be something that we could actually defend against.
As we passed one house after another, I noticed that a few of them had boards nailed over the downstairs windows like they were braced for a bad storm, but most of them didn’t seem to have any extra security measures put into place. They could at least have barbed wire or additional boards over the upstairs windows, since vamps could easily jump up to the second floor if they didn’t feel like ripping off the boards on the first floor windows.
“You want to meet some people?” James asked as he guided the Jeep around another sharp curve. “It’s alright if you’re too tired, but if you’re thinking that you might want to stay for a couple days, just until you get our legs underneath you, then you might wanna show your faces.”
“Sure,” I said. “If it’s okay with the girls.”
They all agreed, so James kept driving forward until we reached the downtown area of Red House. There wasn’t much to speak of, but there were a handful of houses and barns nearby, and there was also a post office and a church, along with a general store that looked like it had been around for at least a damn century. There were other stores along either side of the road, but mostly, it looked like a picture straight out of the Wild West.
The only thing missing was a damn tumbleweed.
The general store must have been a meeting spot in town, because there were about twenty people all camped out in front of it. Some of them stood on the porch as they talked to each other, a few of them leaned up against their trucks in the parking lot, and a few others were headed to stores on the other side of the road.
After James pulled the Jeep into a spot right beside the post office, we all jumped out to follow him toward the general store. Catherine’s uncle was quick to lead the way, since as soon as the people in Red House saw our guns, they started to reach for their own weapons in their trucks or holstered at their sides.
“They’re with me!” James called with a wave. “You know my niece that I’m always talking about?”
A plump, middle-aged woman stepped off the porch of the general store, and she gestured at two teenagers by the post office to come over and join her.
“Don’t tell me it took an apocalypse for your favorite niece to finally come for a visit,” the woman said with a smile as she moved toward us. “Which one of you is Catherine?”
“That’s me,” the auburn-haired girl said. “I know I must look like a mess, but trust me, I’m usually much more put together than this.”
“You’re pretty as a peach,” the woman laughed. “I’m Celia, an old friend of James, and whatever the reason is, I’m glad you’re here. He’s been worried something terrible about you all the way up in New York City.”
“Well, i
t took us a while, but my friends and I finally managed to get out of the city,” Catherine said. “So we figured, why not stop here and check in on old Uncle James?”
“Watch who you’re calling old,” her uncle said with a grin.
“I’ll have my kids get you all something to drink,” Celia said with a nod at the two teenagers who were taking their time to get over to the general store. “I’m sure you’re thirsty, and they’re--”
But the woman stopped mid-sentence, just as I heard the sound of a car crash into something metal from up the road. It was instantly followed by the screech of tires, but before the vehicle even came into view, all the people around the general store looked as terrified as if someone had just exploded a bomb right in the middle of their town.
“Cover!” James shouted.
But by then, it was already too late. As everyone outside panicked and scrambled to get inside the closest building, a minivan appeared on the road and then immediately peeled into the parking lot of the general store. The van didn’t even slow down before the side door opened, and five bloodsuckers instantly jumped out.
Their feet hit the gravel right beside Celia’s two teenagers, so as the rest of the townspeople tried to take cover, the vamps grabbed the teens and started to hustle them back into the van.
Chapter 10
While the rest of the townspeople ran in the other direction, I tossed my shotgun over to Natalie and then ran straight toward the five bloodsuckers and the two teenagers. I could hear Celia scream for help at the sight of her two kids in the clutches of the vamps, and I heard James as he tried to get the girls to take cover inside the store.
But even as he yelled at them to get inside, I immediately heard Natalie shout directions at the girls to all line up on the porch and cover me. I glanced backward for half a second, and it was just enough time to see my gorgeous girlfriend on the front step of the store with her rifle aimed at the van.
Catherine, Erika, and Neko all knelt in a row in front of the porch railing with their rifles locked into their shoulders, while Brianna and Lily stood on the porch itself with their rifles at the ready. My girls all looked fucking badass, but I knew that we would only be able to rely on their weapons as an absolute last resort.
There was too much of a chance that their bullets would hit one of the teenagers, or they might fly past the van completely and injure another person from the town. Instead, this was about to be some real hand-to-hand combat shit.
Five was a lot of fucking bloodsuckers, especially since that meant there was a sixth vamp behind the actual wheel of the van. And as much as I wanted Neko to run into the fight and help me, I wasn’t about to ask her to do that when we were up against quite so many motherfuckers. I at least wanted to take one or two assholes out before I asked the judo champion to come join me.
I would never have been able to fire my shotgun in such close quarters, so I had passed it off to Natalie to free up my hands to use my Louisville slugger instead. When I was just a few strides away from the van, the vehicle finally came to a stop, so I scanned the situation in front of me and decided in a split second which bastard I should start with.
There were three males and two females, plus whoever was still behind the wheel. One of the fanged males was already back inside the van, and he had his arms hooked underneath the teenage human boy’s shoulders to try to pull him up inside, while another bloodsucker in a plaid shirt had hold of the teenager’s ankles.
The third male vamp had thrown the teenage girl over his shoulder, but he had stayed beside the van as he waited for his friends to hustle the boy inside first. Beside the vamp with the teenage girl, both female vamps stood back to back as they assessed the crowd and looked for any other strays that they could pick off.
My feet flew across the gravel to carry me forward, and just before I reached the van, I raised the baseball bat and aimed it at the closest plaid-shirted bloodsucker’s head.
The plaid-shirted vamp’s head was turned away from me as he tried to push the teenage boy up into the van, so even as the other fuckers suddenly all pivoted around to face me, the plaid-shirted asshole didn’t see me right behind him.
Too bad for him.
I slammed my Louisville slugger into the back of his head with enough force to drop him to his knees. He instantly let go of the teenage boy’s ankles, but even though the closest female vamp launched herself toward me, it wasn’t fast enough to stop me from swinging my bat straight down onto his skull again.
This time, the metal smashed in the top of his head, and the vamp slumped to the ground in a puddle of his own moldy brains. As soon as he collapsed against the gravel, the closest female vamp shrieked, and then she twisted mid-air to try to help get the teenage boy inside the van, when her original plan had definitely been to attack me.
Clearly, these assholes hadn’t expected anyone to fight back.
I knew that Natalie was probably waiting for just the right moment to shoot the driver and take him out, but since I didn’t want to give the bloodsuckers any kind of heads up, I didn’t shout out to confirm her plan. Once she was absolutely sure about her aim, my gorgeous girlfriend should be able to pierce right through the glass, because unlike Rhino’s windshield, this was just regular old minivan soccer mom glass, not military-grade, bulletproof shit.
And as much as I wanted to just kill all six vamps before they had a chance to run back down to Black Betsy, I knew that the priority had to be the two teenagers. If I could save them and kill off all the bloodsuckers at the same time, then that would be fan-fucking-tastic, but if I had to pick between the two, the teenagers had to be my top choice.
After all, they were just fucking kids.
I jabbed the end of my Louisville slugger into the kidneys of the female vamp right in front of me, but the second female jumped onto me before I was able to get in a second hit. She clawed her way onto my back like a fucking wildcat, and she instantly wrapped her arms around my head and tried to scratch out my eyes with her long nails.
I kept my eyes shut to protect them, but I stomped my boot down on the spot where the first female had been, and I felt something crunch underneath my foot. The first female bloodsucker cried out, so I just lifted my foot and stamped my boot down again, and this time, I realized that I had caught her on her Achilles tendon.
I figured that I had slowed the first female down enough by now that she wouldn’t immediately be able to help hustle the teenage boy inside the van, and that gave me time to get this harpy off my back now. Even though my eyes were still closed to protect against her razor-sharp nails, I could guess where her head was based on the position of her body on my back, so I adjusted my grip on the slugger and then jammed the handle right back where I guessed her face was.
Her legs instantly dropped from around my waist, so I just jabbed the handle back again and again until her claw-like fingers finally released me. Then as soon as I opened my eyes, I started to whirl toward the female to take her out, but then I saw that the two teenagers needed help first, even before I tried to kill any of the other assholes.
One of the male bloodsuckers still stood off to the side with the teenage girl over his shoulder, and it almost looked like he couldn’t quite decide what to do with her now that he had grabbed her. Every time the vamp moved toward the open van door to throw her inside, the teenage boy kicked and flailed around to take up more space in the doorway, and at the same time, the girl would kick and beat her fists against the vamp’s back, so he had to sling her around until she paused long enough to catch her breath.
While the asshole with the human girl tried to manage her, the male vamp in the van had finally pulled the top half of the teenage boy inside, even though the boy was doing his absolute best to kick and scream against him. The female vamp whose ankle I had crushed had recovered by now, and since she had started to shove the human boy inside the van again, I decided that she should be my next target.
I slammed my elbow back into the female who had claws
for nails, and as blood spurted out from her nose, she staggered backward and left a decent-sized space open behind me. It was enough for me to swing the Louisville slugger back and straight at the neck of the other female vamp in front of me.
As soon as the metal bat rammed into the side of her throat, her neck snapped all the way to the side and just hung there for a second like a deflated balloon. Since the blow hadn’t actually taken her head off, I knew that she wasn’t really dead yet, but I would finish the job in a second.
Right now, I needed to get the teenage boy out of the van. Otherwise, the vamp inside the minivan might be able to pull the boy the rest of the way inside, decide to cut his losses, and then drive off before I could do anything about it.
While the female behind me tried to recover from her broken nose, and while the female in front of me tried to get her head to stand up straight on her shoulders again, I shifted my bat into one hand and then just jumped inside the minivan.
The male vamp inside the van was so surprised that he actually loosened his grip on the boy’s shoulders before I even attacked him. The van was too small for me to use the slugger, so instead, I swung my fist toward the male vamp’s jaw, and it was enough for him to let go of the teenage boy completely.
“Run!” I shouted as I shoved the boy out of the van.
As the teenager took off running, the two females had recovered enough to chase after him, so I hopped back out of the van and swung my bat at both their backs. It hit them both just above their hip bones, and even though it wasn’t enough to force them to their knees, it slowed them down just long enough for the teenage boy to get away.
When the boy was about a dozen paces away from the porch, Catherine and Neko ran forward, grabbed him by the arms, and hurried him back toward the steps of the general store so they could cover him and make sure that the bloodsuckers from the van didn’t try to come after him again.
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 14