by Mia Archer
Jimmy rolled his eyes. I could see it because there was a faint glow to his eyes. Which had been kinda freaky the first time I saw it. Until I remembered I didn’t have anything to be afraid of when it came to vampires.
“You’re so damn funny,” he growled. “Now come on. We need to get out there and help those people!”
I looked to a minivan that was rocking pretty close to where we were hiding in the trees. Whoever was in there didn’t look like they needed help.
“Something tells me those people are going to be pissed off if we interrupt them,” I said.
“Are you sure about that?” Jimmy asked.
I sighed again. “Would you please just let me do this my own way and…”
I stopped. There was something about the way Jimmy was pointing at the van that had me on edge. There was something about the smug look on his face that had me thinking I was about to be terribly wrong about something.
Not to mention there was something tugging at the limits of my consciousness. My Peter tingle was tingling, to borrow a term of art from another bit of pop culture, and if that reaper Spidey Sense was tingling it meant someone was dying nearby.
It was a vague sense most of the time. There were constantly people dying. That sense got sharper the closer that death was to yours truly though. I’d had to make a quick trip to a nursing home and the hospital before coming out here which had been annoying. Not the least because Jimmy had bitched the entire way.
Only now that feeling was a hell of a lot more intense, and it was a hell of a lot closer than the feeling of someone’s grandma biting the big one all alone in a nursing home where her family could pay to not give a fuck about her.
No, this was death that was far closer. Far more personal. I squinted at one of the cars that was rocking nearby, and as though on cue some blood splattered on the window inside showing that there was something nasty going on in there.
“Son of a bitch!” I growled. “What the fuck is going on in there?”
“I’d think that’s obvious,” Jimmy said. “But you’re the one who knows everything that’s going on here, so who am I to…”
“Shut up and stay here,” I growled. “I don’t want you getting in my way.”
“Oh don’t you worry about that,” he said. “I have no intention of going any closer to one of those death cars than I absolutely have to.”
“Good,” I said.
Though that wasn’t entirely fair. There was a possibility he could be useful, after all. He might make for some good bait, or maybe a distraction to keep whatever was killing people in that car off of me long enough that I didn’t get killed and have to wait around for my body to heal to the point that I could get back into the action.
Not that I thought that was likely, but what the fuck ever.
I moved closer to the car. The thing was rocking, but as I got closer I realized the noises weren’t anything like the kind of moaning that usually happened in cars in this spot. No, there was some bad shit going down in there, and it was the kind of shit that’d involved a crane shot and a car getting its top ripped off at the beginning of The Lost Boys.
I didn’t bother to hide my approach. If there was a vampire in there then I wanted that vampire to see the error of its ways right before I gave it a bit of the business. I looked into the backseat, I could see clearly enough because someone had put a dome light on, and saw a bloody mess that would’ve had me losing my lunch if I hadn’t gotten used to the idea of death at a tender young age because being a future reaper meant people tended to die in front of me quite a bit.
“Gross,” I muttered.
Hey, I might be used to seeing death playing out in front of me on the regular, but it didn’t mean I necessarily had the stomach for the kind of gore you usually only saw in old school horror classics starring Robert Englund.
There were three people in the back seat. The car was a little older, and it had the kind of old school bench seat that made for a perfect car for a couple of teenagers getting hot and heavy. I wondered if the parents gave any thought to that when they got the thing on the cheap rather than going with, say, a Honda where it was a hell of a lot more cramped if teenagers wanted to work on making their parents into grandparents at far too young an age.
Though I doubted what was going on in there right now was going to result in any grandchildren. Talk about the kind of threesome that probably had the guy in there wishing he’d been a hell of a lot more specific about his fantasy scenario when he dreamed of something like this happening.
“Ew that’s disgusting,” I said.
And apparently I said it just a little too loud, because the vampire who was in there assaulting the two teenage lovers who’d just come up here to suck some face without getting their blood sucked out of their necks looked up at me.
I blinked a couple of times just to reassure myself that I wasn’t going crazy here. Because I was staring at none other than one of the cheerleaders who’d been converted to vampirism earlier in the day. She stared at me, then her mouth fell open in a hiss that showed off her fangs.
It also totally showed off all the blood currently dripping from her fanged mandibles of death. Like she clearly wasn’t happy about me interrupting her meal.
I rolled my eyes. Maybe that hissing thing worked on the mortals, but it wasn’t going to do jack or shit to scare me away.
“Could you please step outside?” I asked.
The cheerleader, I recognized her from all the practices I’d attended to provide “moral support” for Stacy that had nothing to do with all the eye candy that was regularly on display while I was providing that moral support, surprised me by stepping out of the car.
The surprise wasn’t that she stepped out of the car. I mean that was a surprise, sure, but mostly it was in the way she did it. Instead of using the door like a normal non-crazy person she burst out of the back window which sent bits of safety glass flying every which way.
Damn.
The girl stood on the trunk and there was a screeching noise as she dug her claws into the thing. Sort of like fingernails on a chalkboard, but a hell of a lot more grating and annoying considering she was digging into whatever metal this old boat of a car straight out of the fever dreams of some Detroit designer was made out of.
I sighed. “Could you please stop with the whole intimidation routine please?”
“Fuck you reaper,” the girl said.
“Candace?” I asked, dredging her name up from a quick intro Stacy had done weeks ago. “That is your name, right? Can I call you Candy?”
“I said fuck you, reaper!”
I reached out and smacked her in the ass with a tendril of the old death magic. She didn’t react the way Stacy usually did when I did that sort of thing, though. No, she hissed at me like she was pissed off that I’d done that instead of wagging her finger at me like I'd been a naughty girl, and launched herself at me.
I pulled out the old scythe and hit her with the top of the thing right in the stomach. Sure I could’ve slashed at her and maybe done some more serious damage, but it’s not like this girl had asked to be turned into a bloodsucking creature of the night. I figured if there was still a chance I could track down the head vampire and make that asshole, or bitch, regret the day they ever started turning teenagers into vampires in my town then it’d be worth it to save this girl.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Danielle. About how she’d never had a chance.
“Do you want to tell me where your leader is?” I asked.
Candace glared at me. Wiped some blood from her mouth. Normally that might have me worried that she’d hurt herself going through that window, in this case it only meant she’d just eaten.
“Not gonna say anything?” I asked. “That’s a damn shame, but I suppose…”
I yelped in surprise as something slammed into me and I went tumbling to the ground. Then something else hit me in the gut and the breath was knocked out of me.
I looked up to
see a girl and a boy I recognized from the senior class, both of them with their clothes on at odd angles since they’d clearly been in the process of getting out of those clothes as quickly as they could manage when the vampire cheerleader came at them and ruined their fun, hovering over me and hissing and spitting.
And of course they had their fangs out, because the vampire cheerleader hadn’t been trying to feed. She’d been trying to recruit.
Of fucking course that’s what they were doing out here. Damn it.
"What the hell are you waiting for?" Jimmy hissed from his hiding spot in some bushes by the tree line.
"I don't see you trying to help," I growled back at him.
"They’re fucking vampires!" Jimmy said.
"And you're a fucking vampire!" I said as the cheerleader lifted her hands and brought her claws out.
I winced. This was going to hurt. I'd been attacked by a bear once upon a time on a family trip to the Smoky Mountains. It’d been a hell of a surprise for the rangers working that case to see me rising from the dead.
At least until a more senior Ranger who was used to dealing with reapers showed up and told them they all needed to get the hell out of the way and shut the fuck up if they knew what was good for them and their careers. That man had been quite eloquent when it came to wielding the saltier parts of the English language. I’d learned quite a bit that day, above and beyond the lesson about not getting between a black bear that was easily three times my size at that age and her cubs.
The point is this girl sinking her claws into me was going to hurt. Even if I was going to get better. She reared back like she was getting ready to pounce.
"Stop!"
I slammed my head against the ground a couple of times. I wasn't sure if I was trying to commit suicide using the ground, not a good plan considering it was nice and soft, or if I was just taking out a little bit of frustration regarding my current situation.
Either way, I figured my situation had just gone from bad to worse. I was out of the frying pan and into the fire, to quote a particular turn of phrase. I’d just gone up Shit Creek and my paddle had fallen into the nice brown water. Think of any other phrase for somebody being deep in the shit, and that was me in that moment.
The vampire cheerleader hesitated for a moment. Only for a moment, but that moment was all the Veronica needed to assert her dominance over the situation.
"I said stop!" the voice snapped again.
Candace’s eyes glazed over. Of course. Vampire compulsion. It was a hell of a drug. At least all the stuff I’d read about vampires while going through some of my dad's reading materials agreed vampire compulsion was a hell of a drug.
Assuming it was being used on another vampire, that is. The stuff didn’t work for shit against reapers, and apparently it could be pretty touch and go as to whether or not it worked on humans.
I pulled myself up to stare at Veronica. I even thought I heard Jimmy whimpering from somewhere in the bushes, though it was difficult to tell if that was his whimpering or maybe the gurgling of one of the other vampire victims in one of the other cars that was rocking for reasons completely different from why why they usually rocked up here.
"So you couldn't leave well enough alone," Veronica said. "When are you going to learn you shouldn't be messing with things that don't concern you?"
"You killing a bunch of people who aren't ready to die totally concerns me bitch," I said, holding my hand out and letting my scythe rematerialize there. "So what do you say? Want to see how wrong Blue Oyster Cult was ?"
31
Head Cheerleader
Veronica frowned. Shook her head. She looked confused.
"Who?" She asked.
"Not The Who," I said. "Blue Oyster Cult. You know, Godzilla? Don't Fear the Reaper?"
"I've never heard of them," she said.
"Oh for fuck's sake!" I said. "Didn't you keep up with modern music? I know you’ve got that whole long living and long-suffering undead thing going for you, all that brooding shit doesn't make you nearly as interesting as you think it does, but surely you heard a record from the last forty years?"
"Not really," she said. "Why would I give a fuck about all that crappy new music when I can listen to Bowzer and the Sha Na Na?”
I frowned. “The guy from the Mario games?”
“What’s a Mario game?” she shot back. “I’m talking about music.”
I rolled my eyes. "Oh honey. If you think this Bowser dude is the height of music then I really feel bad for you. Talk about an eternity that really is a living hell! Also, weren't you from like the late seventies? The three ghostly stooges remembered you."
“You grew up here,” she snapped. “The place is always twenty years behind the rest of the world.”
“True that,” I muttered.
We shared a brief smile. It was a moment of brief solidarity between two teenagers who'd had the misfortune of growing up in the middle of nowhere. It was only a moment, though. I did still have to rip that vampire spirit out of her and save my girlfriend, after all.
"I like Sha Na Na,” someone muttered from under the bushes behind me.
I decided to ignore that little quip from Jimmy. After all, I had more important business to take care of. Like making sure this Veronica bitch never hurt anyone ever again.
"Come on," I said. "If we're going to do this then let's fucking do this."
Veronica smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. It was the kind of mean girl smile I used to get from some of the girls who thought they were hot shit popular bitches back in middle school when everyone was terrible to everyone else, and I relished the opportunity to smack one of those smiles off of a mean girl's face. Even if she was a mean girl who'd first cut her teeth, figuratively speaking, decades before I was born.
I screamed as I threw myself at her. It was an unearthly wail. The kind of wail that probably would've had people turning and looking if it weren't for the fact that there was nobody up here but vampires and people who were so busy getting killed by vampires and turned to the undead that they probably didn't have a lot of time to think about other terrifying supernatural creatures filling the night with their unusual sounds.
At the last moment I jumped and did an old-fashioned Kirk kick. One foot up, and the other out as it slammed into her chest. At least the idea was it would slam into her chest.
Unfortunately that kind of thing relied on having a stuntman who was obliging enough to stand still for Mr. Shatner while the kick landed. I didn't have an obliging stuntman in a rubber monster suit like Shatner used to have back in the day.
Veronica easily stepped to the side. Which meant I went tumbling to the ground behind her and heard a snap as something in my leg broke.
“Motherfucker that hurts!” I shouted.
“Y’know it doesn’t have to hurt,” Veronica said. “You could join us.”
“What, and rule the town as queen bitch and reaper?” I said.
She hit me with another blank look that was yet another reminder that this girl had missed out on a good chunk of pop culture. She probably thought Buck Rogers or Commando Cody were the height of science fiction. Or maybe Leslie Nielsen seducing a very sexy looking Ann Francis.
Then again she didn’t look like the kind of girl who would’ve been into that sort of thing to begin with. Not decades before the slow transformation Star Wars worked on the culture made it cool to be a geek.
“Is that another reference to something that came along after I got turned into a vampire?” she asked. “Because we’ve been over this before. I really didn’t keep up with stuff that came along after I was turned.”
I stopped to consider that. Depending on when she’d been turned, and there was definitely some doubt there since I hadn’t hammered down dates with the three stooges, it was possible Empire had been out when she was turned. Not that I thought she was likely to have gone to see it either way.
“Fuck you,” I said.
“Tempting, but I have better o
ffers right now,” she said, earning a middle finger from me as I realized exactly what she was talking about. “And I’m not even all that bad. You should see some of the really old vampires who’ve been kicking around for a few hundred years. There’s seriously one dude I heard about who refuses to read anything that’s not etched marks in a clay tablet. Says that the new stuff people have come up with on paper is nothing like the classics.”
I paused to think about that. The idea that there was still a vampire out there kicking around from the days when cuneiform had been the newest form of communication was pretty amazing, but it had nothing to do with kicking Veronica’s ass.
So I flew at her again, and this time I made sure I was actually flying instead of throwing myself through the air.
I slashed at her with my scythe. She ducked out of the way like she was Keanu in a movie she didn’t even know existed. I landed and came up ready to throw myself at her.
“You’re really insistent on trying to take me out,” she said. “Are you like this with all vampires, or am I special?”
There was a twinkle to her eye as she said that. I wasn’t sure if she was taunting me, or if she genuinely thought I might be interested a fucking vampire.
Then again now that Stacy had been turned I guess there was at least one vampire I was very interested in. There was no way I’d be interested in her ass though, no matter how good it looked in her out of time clothing choices that were actually starting to come around to being in style again.
“You have something I want,” I growled. “And if it takes killing you to get her back then that’s what I’m going to do.”
I threw myself at her again. Sure I knew I was being remarkably uninventive with my fighting strategies here considering all the options that were available to me, but I was mad enough that I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than throw myself at this bitch over and over again.
She stepped to the side again. Only she was willing and able to change up her strategy a bit. She lashed out this time, and I felt a blinding pain on my backside. Not the kind of thing you wanted to feel while you were in the middle of an intense fight with a vampire.