I zigzagged the car back and forth, but the vamps managed to stay right behind me. I didn’t think there was any way for me to lose them before the pier, so all I could hope for now was that they would crash themselves into a street light.
Instead, they tried to crash into me.
I had just slowed the car down enough to make the next left turn, but the cops either didn’t notice or didn’t care. They just kept their speed up, and their hood slammed into the rear bumper of the Civic.
I felt my skull bounce forward and then back against the headrest, but even though my neck immediately started to throb, I knew that my body would heal quickly from any whiplash. But I couldn’t say the same thing for the girls, so I needed to get us out of there.
“You two okay?” I demanded as I started the next left turn at full-speed.
“I think we’re pretty far from okay back here,” Brianna wailed.
“We’re fine,” Neko said quickly. “Just a couple bumps.”
“Just sit back up and buckle in tight,” I said. “At this point, I don’t think it matters if they see you, and I’d rather you not get hurt if they decide to hit us again.”
I pumped the brakes lightly mid-turn, and it was just enough to stabilize us. But the squad car didn’t just turn behind us like I had expected. Instead, it just adjusted its course slightly to the left and then kept going straight, so it was headed directly for the left rear tire.
I slammed down on the accelerator, but the squad car was going too fast for me to move out of the way in time. It collided into the rear of the Civic just behind the left tire, and it spun the right end into a parked car on the side of the road.
Brianna started to scream, but Neko just reached over and clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet. As both girls clung to each other in the backseat, I let go of the wheel, let the Civic spin in the direction that it wanted to go, and then finally took control of the car again.
I zipped forward, but the squad car was still right behind me, and there were fires on this street, too. There weren’t as many as there had been on MLK, but there were still enough to make me slow down.
When I glanced into the rear view mirror again, the cops were both just laughing, and even though it probably should have worried me, it actually made me feel a little better. They were enjoying themselves, and that meant they might not have called for back-up yet. They wanted to hunt us down themselves, but at least I still only had two of the fanged fuckers to deal with.
I saw the intersection with Broadway up ahead, so I knew that if I took a left and then tried to get back on to MLK, I would be headed straight for the pier again. And even though I would rather have led these cops on a chase all over Manhattan, they had managed to keep so close to me that I didn’t feel super great about my chances of losing them.
If I wanted to get rid of them, I would just have to kill them.
I swerved onto Broadway, and the cops swerved with me. I took the next right to head straight for the piers, and the squad car took it right behind me. Even when I had to take the Civic halfway up onto a sidewalk to avoid a burning car, the vamp cops just stayed right on my tail.
When the river came into view up ahead, I could only think of one way out of this.
“You’re gonna have to make a run for it,” I told the girls.
“What?” Brianna dropped her friend’s hands to stare straight at me in the rear view mirror.
“As soon as we go under that overpass, I’m gonna hold off the cops,” I explained as I pointed up ahead, “and you two are gonna jump out and run to the boat. It’s the only one docked there-- the Summer Breeze.”
“We’ll never make it,” Neko said. “I know the pier is right there, but the vamps are--”
“Don’t worry about the vamps,” I cut her off. “I’ll take care of them. You just get to the boat and try to hide.”
“Should we untie it from the docks?” the pink-haired girl asked.
“Yeah, go ahead and untie it,” I said, “but keep one loop around it until you see me running toward you. I’ll just jump into the boat.”
We were driving under the overpass now, so the pier was directly up ahead. My boat bobbed gently up and down in the water at the end of the pier, so if I wanted the girls to have the shortest possible run to the boat, then I would have to make the drop-off perfect the first time.
“On my count, you both jump out the right side of the car, got it?” I demanded.
“Got it,” Neko responded, and Brianna just nodded.
I veered to the left, scraped against a metal barrier, and scratched the car against a brick wall as I plowed right ahead. Then just as the cop car turned to follow me, I shifted into reverse and adjusted the wheel, so I flew backward at just enough of an angle that I slipped right by the squad car.
And neither vamp cop looked too happy about it.
I kept reversing at an angle until the rear tires bumped up onto the sidewalk, and then I immediately unlocked the car doors.
“Go!” I shouted as I slammed on the brakes. “Now!”
I half-expected them to fumble with the door, but Neko was calm under pressure, so she threw open the door just as the car slowed down to a crawl. As soon as both girls scrambled out of the Civic, they pulled each other to their feet and started to run toward the pier.
And just like I had guessed they would, the moment the cops saw the two human girls take off toward the pier, they forgot all about me and my little car. The squad car veered to the right, narrowly missed a street light, crashed into a trash can, and then just kept going. It looked like their plan was just to run the girls over and then take whatever blood was still left in their bodies.
I shifted back into drive and pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. The cops had slowed down when they collided with the trash can, and that was all the time that I needed to catch up with them. When my front tires were even with their back tires, I veered away from them just enough to give my car a little extra acceleration, and then I rammed the front driver’s side of my car straight into their back tire.
The vamps had been so focused on the two human girls that they hadn’t paid much attention to me, so there was no time for them to adjust their course. Instead, the moment my car hit their back tire, it spun them around in a circle two times, until their car finally came to a rest with its headlights pointed away from the river.
Neko and Brianna were a little over halfway down the pier, and to their credit, neither one of them looked over their shoulders to see if they were being chased by vamps. Maybe they had watched enough horror movies to know that when somebody checked over their shoulders, it only slowed them down just enough for their attacker to catch up to them.
As soon as the cop car stopped spinning, I slammed on my brakes, shifted the Civic into park, and jumped out the door with my Louisville slugger in hand. Before I could even start to run after the girls, the driver of the squad car jumped out of his door, too, and then he took off after Neko and Brianna.
There was no sign of the second NYPD vamp, so I just sprinted toward the driver to take him down before he could reach the girls.
I knew that this wouldn’t be like my fight with Isaac.
There would be no negotiation, no attempts to stall, and no efforts to seem nice long enough to come up with a plan. If this bloodsucker caught up to either of them before I got to him, he’d make a drinking fountain out of their carotid arteries.
I was close enough that I could have made the shot, but I couldn’t slow down long enough to pull out either of my guns and take aim. Instead, I just pushed all my strength into my leg muscles until they moved so fast that it felt like I was almost flying above the ground.
I was half a second behind him, but the girls were only two seconds ahead of him. The river was right in front of us, but if the girls couldn’t slow down in the next few seconds, they wouldn’t be able to jump into the boat and would instead just run right into the river.
When I was close
enough to jump on top of the NYPD vamp, I flung my Louisville slugger at the back of his knees to trip him up, and even though he only stumbled for a second, it let me launch myself into the air after him. My boots landed on the back of his calves, my body slammed into his spine, and my hands clawed so deeply into the back of his shirt that I felt my blunt nails dig into his skin.
The vamp howled and tried to shake me off, but I brought my elbow down onto the back of his neck and made him stumble again. I wrapped one leg around his torso, and I rammed my other knee into his kidneys over and over again until the fucker dropped to his knees.
As soon as he was halfway down on the ground, I let go of him so I could body-slam his spine again. This time, he fell forward, but he caught himself on his hands and then rolled away from me before I could finish the job.
While I lunged forward to tackle him while he was still weak, I spared one quick glance up toward the girls. Neko had just climbed into the boat, and now she was helping Brianna down into it, so they should be able to untie it in less than a minute.
That gave me less than a minute to take care of these two fanged assholes.
The second cop still hadn’t left the squad car, but I took that as a good sign instead of something to worry about. Maybe he had given himself a concussion when I rammed my car into theirs, and now his body had to work overtime to repair itself before he got out of the car and came over to join in on the fight.
For now, I leaped on the weakened cop who was still on the ground, but he caught my jaw with an uppercut before I had a chance to bring him down. His fist rocked my jaw up into my skull, but I shook it off and tackled him anyway.
We rolled around in the grass for a minute, while each of us tried to get a good enough grip on our opponent to immobilize them. Every time I gripped both sides of his head, he swung at me with his fists until I had to release him. But every time he grabbed my shoulders and started to try to bite me, I kneed him in the stomach or the crotch, and the fanged fucker had to let go of me.
Finally, I kicked him so hard in the balls that his granddad must have felt it, and he rolled onto his back with a groan. Instantly, I was on my feet with my arms positioned for a body slam, and by the time the vamp looked up from his wounded crotch, it was already too late.
I plunged my full weight down on top of him, and I sent it all into my arm. As I fell on top of him, I drove my elbow into the soft flesh right below the vamp’s sternum, and I heard his chest give a little pop as all the breath fled from his lungs.
I jammed my elbow just under his ribs a second time, just to make sure that he couldn’t re-inflate his lungs any time soon. When his legs flopped limply off to one side, I pushed myself back to my feet, stumbled over to grab my Louisville slugger, and then raised it above the NYPD vamp’s skull.
He didn’t even have enough breath left to beg for his life. The fanged cop managed to halfway raise one hand toward me, but then I bashed his skull in with my slugger before he had a chance to do anything else. The metal cracked against the vamp’s skull, and since I had just fed from Neko, it only took one more blow to smash right through the bone.
I brought the bat down one more time just to make sure that his brains were good and trashed, and then I straightened my posture to assess the situation.
The girls were still in the boat, and the other cop was still in the squad car. I took a step back to see at a better angle into the cop car, but before I even saw the other vamp, I heard him.
He was on the radio, and he was desperately requesting back-up.
“Cop habits die hard, I guess,” I muttered, but I didn’t run toward the second vamp.
If he wanted to radio for back-up instead of come after me, then he was more than welcome to do so. It would give me just a little longer to escape, and hopefully by the time any more NYPD vamps showed up, we would be well on our way down the river.
I swiveled away from the squad car and sprinted the rest of the way down the pier through the open gate.
“Untie it!” I shouted as I ran. “Try to push off!”
Brianna quickly unlooped the rest of the rope from its tie on the pier, and then she and Neko pushed off on the dock together. The boat started to drift into the river a little bit, but after another push, it rocked further away from the pier and out into the open water.
I didn’t even stop when I reached the end of the dock. I just lengthened my strides just before I reached the water, and then I launched myself through the air like I was in the goddamn Olympics.
My boots smacked into the floor of the boat when I landed beside the two girls, and it made the whole boat rock back and forth. Neko stumbled but caught herself on the edge, and I slipped my arm around Brianna before she lost her balance.
“You two better take a seat,” I said as I bent my knees to keep myself steady. “This shit’s about to get bumpy.”
“Oh, Sam, that was amazing,” the blonde gushed. “When you had that baseball bat and you--”
“Girl, read the room!” Neko hissed as she tugged her friend toward the seats at the back of the Summer Breeze. “Now is not the time to tell Sam how incredible he is in a fight. Save that shit for later.”
As the two girls staggered toward the back of the boat as we continued to rock, I pulled the boat key out of my pocket, slid it into the ignition, and cranked her to life. Brianna and Neko had done a good job when they untied the boat, so now all I had to do was accelerate the fuck away from the pier.
Summer Breeze glided away from the docks, and as soon as we were in the middle of the river, I increased her speed even more, so we started to fly down the river back down toward Brooklyn Heights.
“Sorry about your car, Brianna,” I called over my shoulder as we started to bounce through the waves.
“I’d rather lose my car than my life, thanks,” the blonde called back. “And really, seafoam-green was never my color!”
“Everything’s your color, Bree,” Neko laughed.
“What?” Brianna sighed. “I can’t help it if blonde goes with everything.”
The wind had picked up by now, and I wondered if that meant a storm was on its way, or if it was just an early morning breeze. It would be light out soon enough, but we should still be able to make it back to the parking garage before the sun came up.
“How can you see where you’re going?” Neko asked.
I had forgotten that I hadn’t turned the boat lights on, since that didn’t affect my ability to see one way or another. But I realized that the girls were in complete darkness behind me, other than the city lights and the couple of fires that we passed on either side of the river.
“I call it vamp vision,” I said with a smirk. “I can see the same at night as I can in the daytime.”
“So that makes you, like, a super-predator, right?” Brianna asked.
“Maybe,” I laughed. “It’s sure as hell helpful, I know that much.”
I glanced back again, but even though I still saw red and blue police lights, they were far behind us, so I assumed that they were still just from the squad car that I had left behind. But when I looked back over my shoulder again, the flashing lights were closer, and that was when I saw it.
A police boat had responded to the vamp’s call for back-up, and now it was speeding straight toward us down the Hudson.
Chapter 16
The cop boat was moving fucking fast, and based on how quickly it seemed to be catching up to us, I knew it had to be going even faster than we were. I increased our speed even more, but the boat behind us just increased their speed to match mine.
“What do we do?” Brianna wailed.
“How about we start by not panicking?” Neko responded with a roll of her eyes. “Sam, can we outrun them?”
“Maybe,” I said with a glance at the gas levels in the Summer Breeze. “But there’s not a whole lot of places that we can actually run to.”
“Well, can’t we just, like, drive back to Brooklyn and run onshore before they catch us?” th
e blonde asked.
“Bree, you know they’re vamps, not fish, right?” the Japanese girl sighed. “They would just follow us back onshore.”
“She’s right,” I told the blonde. “We’ve got to get rid of them before we get back to the docks, and since we can’t just chase each other forever in circles on the river, we’re gonna have to think of something else.”
“Okay, so how do we take out a whole boat?” Neko asked. “You don’t have any grenades or shit stashed around here, do you?”
“No, I’m afraid we haven’t run across any grenades yet,” I said with a smirk, “but I’ll add it to our list of things to get.”
“I don’t want to be the one to point out the obvious,” Brianna said, “but you know, I am a proud blonde, so-- can’t you just use those guns?”
“Damn, Bree!” Neko laughed. “The man’s trying to save our lives, and all you can do is objectify him?”
“I meant his actual guns, not his muscles,” the blonde said as her face blushed pink in the darkness. “Like his weapons, you know?”
“I think she might just be teasing you,” I snickered and then glanced over my shoulder again.
The cop boat hadn’t gained any more ground on us, but it was still a hell of a lot closer than I wanted it to be. I veered to the right in the water, so the other boat might slow down in the waves that I made, but they just bounced a little higher and then seemed to move a little closer.
I wished that there was some way to know what the NYPD vamps had planned, but I could only guess based on what I would do in their position.
So, on the one hand, they might suddenly speed up and try to crash into us, so we would be dead in the water, and then they could board and feed to their hearts’ content. Then again, they had to have weapons, so they could always just try to shoot us, or more specifically, they could try to shoot me, and then they could still board and feed on the girls to their hearts’ content.
I wasn’t about to let either option happen.
After all, I had just safely gotten to and from Columbia University when Manhattan was crawling with vampires, and I had just killed my girlfriend’s bloodsucking brother when he went full-on psycho. I wasn’t about to let one boat full of NYPD vampire-douchebags stop me from protecting Brianna and Neko, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to let them stop me from getting back to Natalie and the rest of the girls.
Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth (Book 3): Vampire Lord 3 Page 22