by Mia Archer
“How do you figure?”
I hit the emergency services dude with a flat stare. He blushed and looked away after taking in the robes and the scythe and everything. It should’ve been pretty fucking obvious how I knew about the two puncture marks.
That didn’t stop him from doing his thing, though it wasn’t long before he sighed and shook his head. That was good for a wail from mommy dearest, and I tried to tune it out.
“Right,” I said. “So if we don’t have any other observations I’m going to need all of you to take a step back.”
I stood and looked behind me. To where someone was hiding behind an old set of bleachers left over from when this had been a spot for watching swim meets and not a storage area.
“You can come out now dear,” I said. “I don’t know what you heard about me, but I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Who’s she talking to?” the EMT who’d already asked a stupid question asked.
“Shut up,” one of the cops, an older looking dude who looked like he’d been on the force for awhile and had seen some shit, said.
“She’s talking to the girl who was killed,” Stacy said, also staring into the bleachers where there was someone down on her knees rocking back and forth with a faint glow around her that said she was no longer among the living.
I was pretty sure that ghost was Danielle. I’d been up here a few times before, and I’d never seen a ghost up here. I was well aware of the usual hauntings around here since those hauntings loved showing themselves to me thanks to the whole reaper thing.
“What are you talking about?” the woman who was being held back by the cops screeched. “What have you done to my baby? My baby can’t be dead! Danielle!”
Her shrieking was starting to sound otherworldly. Not the kind of thing I liked to hear. The cops and EMTs didn’t look like they liked hearing it either, but it was something they were used to. An unpleasant part of the job.
“I know this is going to sound weird,” I said, getting down in front of the bleachers. “But we might be able to get you back in your body. You have to trust me though.”
The girl looked up at me, spectral tears streaming down her ghostly cheeks, but she didn’t move. I sighed. I didn’t have time for this. Any moment now a vampire spirit would be coming to occupy her body, and the last thing I needed was a fight in front of all these nice people who could get hurt.
The hiss that came from behind me told me it was a little too late for that though. I wheeled around and stared at a version of Danielle who looked very similar to the Danielle I’d seen walking the halls, only her hands were claws and she was holding that EMT who’d been asking all the stupid questions by the neck.
Meanwhile Danielle’s mom was screaming and crying tears of joy that her baby was back, despite all the evidence that her baby was clearly in a “sometimes dead is bettah” scenario.
“Motherfucker,” I growled. “Can’t I have just one easy day on this job?”
19
Undead Girl
Stacy hefted one of her stakes and ran at vampire Danielle before I could stop her.
I figured there wasn’t going to be much chance that I was going to stop her before she reached Danielle, so the least I could do was try and make this a little easy for her. I whipped out a tendril of the old death magic and swept Danielle’s feet.
The EMT she’d been strangling fell back and tumbled towards the people at the stairs. He hit them like a bowling ball running into a bunch of pins, and from there all of them, including Danielle’s screaming mother, went tumbling down.
I really hoped I wasn’t going to get the old death ping from one of them. Old people falling down stairs was a hell of a lot more dangerous than most people realized. All it took was someone landing wrong on their neck and that’s all she wrote.
I had other problems right now though. Like the way vampire Danielle had recovered from her little trip and was scrambling to her feet. She jumped at the wall, only Stacy was on her holding on for dear life. Or maybe she was holding on for dear undeath considering what she was holding onto.
Either way, riding a vampire who was climbing the walls like a cockroach didn’t seem like the best idea for Stacy’s long term survival. Especially all the way up here on the second floor.
“Stacy!” I called out. “You really need to be more careful!”
“Then get out here and save my ass!” she shouted back.
She sounded more excited than terrified. Not that I was all that surprised that she sounded more excited than terrified. No, this was exactly the kind of crazy thing she loved, and at this point I wasn’t even going to try and act surprised that she was loving treating a vampire crawling the walls as a bucking bronco.
The vampire leapt out over the pool and then grabbed onto the ceiling up above. She hissed and tried to get rid of Stacy, but Stacy held on with a determination that was impressive as the thing scuttled around the ceiling trying its best to get rid of my girlfriend and not doing a very good job of it.
“Damn,” one of the cops muttered. “This is way better than the fights they had on the old Buffy show.”
I shook my head. That was enough to bring me out of the funk that’d been brought on by the hotness of watching my girlfriend doing her vampire hunter thing.
“Yeah, and she’s hotter than Sarah Michelle Gellar in her prime too.”
“Gross,” I said. “She could be your daughter, dude. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to get out there and save my girlfriend.”
I put extra emphasis on the girlfriend part, and the cop had the good grace to blush at least.
“You sure she needs the help?” the cop asked.
I followed his gaze. Sure enough there was Stacy flying all over the place and looking absolutely amazing hanging over the pool with a death grip on the vampire. Though I wasn’t sure exactly what the hell she was doing.
She took one of the squirt guns at her side and flipped open the little cap that kept the water in. Then she dropped the thing into the water down below.
The vampire, meanwhile, still didn’t seem happy. The former Danielle was bucking this way and that and trying to get rid of Stacy, but Stacy held on tenaciously.
No, she was doing more than that. She was grabbing at the vampire’s claws. Like she was trying to get the thing to let go or something.
“Stacy!” I shouted. “Are you crazy?”
I’d let this go on for entirely too long. Sure it was impressive watching Stacy doing her thing, but that didn’t mean I wanted my girlfriend to die in a fall. So I ran and leapt through the air in the hopes of catching her.
Only I knew even as I flew out over the pool that I was going to be too late. Stacy managed to pry one of the vampire’s clawed hands out of the ceiling. The vamp fell, and the force of that fall was enough for the thing’s momentum to pull the other claws out.
Stacy and the vampire both went tumbling down towards the pool. The ceiling was pretty high in here, and I dove for Stacy even as I knew that I wasn’t going to get to her in time.
There was a splash as the vampire slammed into the water, shrieking the entire time.
I had visions of Stacy breaking something as she slammed into the water. At least she was over the deep end, but that wasn’t much comfort. Only at the last moment she tucked herself in and slammed into the water doing the ultimate cannonball that caused water to splash almost as high as the ceiling.
That was going to sting her ass, to be sure, but at least she wasn’t going to do the ultimate killer belly flop and she wasn’t going to dive all the way to the bottom and slam her neck against the bottom.
Something really weird started happening after she landed. The water around her started to bubble and boil. I continued my dive, only she came up gasping for air before I could slam into that water and rescue her.
From the way she started swimming for the edge it didn’t seem like she was going to need much rescuing, but then something exploded out of the
pool.
The vampire girl looked more like something out of the nightmares of some makeup designer for a zombie movie than the kind of thing you expected to see on the vampire end of the spectrum.
“What the ever loving fuck is that?” I shouted.
The thing still had its claws and fangs, and that was the only thing I really cared about. Because it looked like it was getting ready to sink those claws and fangs into my girlfriend, and like hell was I going to let something like that happen!
Stacy, meanwhile, turned around when she heard me screaming about whatever the fuck had just come out of the water. Though it’s not like it was all that big a mystery what was coming out of the water. Not when a vampire had just gone in there.
I just wished I knew what was causing the thing to go all melty and zombiesque all of a sudden.
Stacy stared at the thing and blinked a couple of times, water streaming down around her as she stared in terror. Only as the vampire swam for her something weird happened. It was as though with every passing second more and more of the thing melted away. By the time it reached out to Stacy and tried to hit her with one of the claws, those claws were disintegrating so fast that they were gone before they could hit her.
Stacy continued staring, her eyes wide, then she looked up at me before turning and swimming for the edge.
“What the hell happened there?” I asked.
Stacy pulled herself out of the pool and sat there on the edge, though when she saw some of the steam rising off of the pool, particularly where Danielle the former vampire had been, she pulled her legs out of the water.
“I was banking on diffusion to do some of the work for me there,” Stacy said, breathing hard as she looked down at the pool.
“Diffusion?” I asked. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’ll admit it’s a danger relying on scientific principles when we’re dealing with something that’s clearly supernatural, but I was kinda hoping the holy water’s vampire vaporizing properties would diffuse through the water fast enough that it would be enough to kill that bitch, and it turns out I was sort of right.”
I stared at her for a long moment. I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing, even as it totally made sense.
“You dropped the holy water into the pool and that made the whole pool blessed water,” I said, dumbfounded. “Which means that when the girl was dropped in there she was surrounded by holy water which is literally like lava or acid or something for vampires.”
“Well I was hoping that was the case,” Stacy said. “Besides, it wasn’t all diffusion. I also got myself ordained by an online church before I got here and I blessed the water when I hit. Maybe that did it.”
“Damn,” I said. “Remind me to never get on your bad side.”
“Why would you ever worry about that?” she asked.
“I’m not,” I said. “But so far no one has been able to find a weakness for reapers, other than necromancers, and I’d really rather not find out what you could come up with.”
“Well you’ve got nothing to worry about,” she said, scrambling to her feet and looking oh so sexy standing there dripping wet.
That dip in the pool had also made certain parts of her outfit a little see through, and that wasn’t getting any complaints from me! Of course she was still wearing a bra and underwear which preserved her modesty, but still.
The moment was ruined, of course, by a scream. I looked over to the pool entrance to see Danielle’s mom staring at the pool that had held her daughter up until a moment ago.
Now it was fizzling and sizzling and there was steam rising from the water making the pool look like some idiot had just dropped a gremlin in there just in time for the third act, but there was no vampire in there. Danielle was well and truly done for.
“I might’ve been able to save her if we’d waited,” I said.
“Yeah, well tell that to the people she was about to attack,” Stacy said. “By the time she was scrambling across the ceiling I was thinking about saving my ass more than I was thinking about how we could bring her in.”
“But that’s the thing Stacy,” I said, some irritation creeping into my voice. “If you would’ve left it to me I could’ve caught her or something. I could’ve killed the vampire spirit that’d possessed her.”
“That’s what you think,” Stacy said, a bit of irritation coming to her voice as well. “You’ve been doing such a good job of taking out the vampires so far, after all.”
“I don’t think I like your tone of voice, Stacy,” I said.
Honestly it was a little difficult to stay mad at her. Sure on the one hand she was being infuriating, but at the same time she was just so damn hot and that was distracting me. I knew I kept letting her get away with stuff because I was distracted by the sexy, but I wasn’t going to let it keep happening.
“That girl could’ve been saved,” I said. “Maybe. We at least needed to take the chance, but now we’re never going to get that chance because you melted her.”
Stacy drew herself up to her full height. Which was about the same height as yours truly. She took a couple of deep breaths like she was getting ready to really lay into me.
Then she wheeled around and stormed out of the pool, holding a hand out behind her and making a very rude gesture that suggested doing something we’d done a couple of times before, sure, but something told me she wasn’t coming onto me with that gesture this time around.
Well shit. This evening had gone to shit pretty fucking fast, leaving me standing alone with a screaming incoherent mother staring down at the pool her daughter had just melted in.
Just fucking great.
20
Deception
I was waiting for Stacy at the front entrance the next morning, but she didn’t show. Which was weird. I would’ve figured she would’ve been there at the usual spot. Sure we’d had one hell of an argument the night before, but that didn’t mean we were going to stay mad at each other.
At least we hadn’t stayed mad at each other before.
“Trouble in paradise?” Luke asked, floating down next to me and dodging the ‘90s skater dude who was forever reenacting the moment when his skating ability hadn’t been enough to save him from a traumatic neck injury that ended his life.
“Something like that,” I said. “Stacy is usually here waiting for me.”
“Maybe she already went into the school,” Luke said.
“Did you see her go in?” I asked.
“Well no,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean she isn’t in there. Just that I didn’t see her go in there.”
“Yeah, but don’t tell me you weren’t keeping an eye out for her,” I said. “I’ve seen the way you stare at her ass when she shows up for school, and I know you wouldn’t miss an opportunity to sneak a peek.”
“I could ask Arnold and Jake if they saw anything at any of the other entrances,” he said. “They’d be keeping an eye out too.”
I rolled my eyes and frowned as I looked at all the people streaming in. It worried me that Stacy wasn’t out here. It didn’t help that she’d been ignoring my texts ever since that argument in the pool.
I knew she was probably just still pissed off, but that didn’t make me feel any better about her not answering my texts. It really didn’t make me feel better about her not being here this morning.
“Something tells me she’s not showing up,” Luke said.
“Damn it,” I said, then turned and headed back into the school.
I didn’t like that she wasn’t showing up. I didn’t like that she could be out there and something could’ve gone terribly wrong.
Sure it was a hell of a lot more likely that it was something simpler. That she’d simply decided she was going to make me pay by leaving me hanging, but that didn’t make me feel any better about her potentially lying drained in a ditch somewhere out there because she ran into those vampire assholes and I wasn’t there to save her.
I was ready to burst
by the time I got to lunch. If she wasn’t there at lunch then I was going to go find her.
At least I didn’t have the familiar pinging that told me someone had died somewhere in town. That was a small mercy that I was on duty and would know the moment something bad happened.
It wasn’t much comfort, though. It was sort of like when you know you’re going to get a phone call that’s bad news, and the last thing you want is to get that call even as you anticipate it because you want to get it over with.
I stalked into the lunch room, and that’s when I realized there was something really off. Everyone was looking at me, but they were giving me weird sidelong lingering looks.
Like the looks I got after the homecoming debacle. Sort of like a bunch of people would look at a freak the night after, say, a girl was melted to nothing in the pool because she’d been turned into a vampire.
Come to think of it things had been quiet all day long. I didn’t bother going through the motions of getting my lunch today, though. No, I went straight to our table and sat with my arms crossed staring at everyone around me as though challenging them to come over and say something, anything, about anything that’d happened the night before.
Funnily enough nobody said so much as boo to me. Just like no one actually had the guts to come out and say anything after homecoming.
Bunch of wimps, all of them.
“Hey, so I checked with Jake and Arnold and neither one of them saw her this morning,” Luke said, his head rising up from under the table in a move that would’ve been creepy if I wasn’t used to the dead doing their thing at school.
I bit back a few choice words that would’ve gotten the attention of a couple of teachers who were always hovering around the edge of the lunch room looking bored. The lunch room was always a cut rate Lord of the Flies where everyone towed the line between misbehaving just to the edge of actually making any of the teachers get off their asses and do something about it.