Vampire Innocent | Book 12 | Ancient Vampire Death Cults & Other Annoyances

by Cox, Matthew S.

  Donnie approaches the curator. “We are here on behalf of Arthur Wolent. Your ilk are not—”

  Casual as anything, the curator backhand slaps Donnie, launching him almost to the sidewalk. He lands a short distance from me, jaw smashed, face in worse shape than what I did to Troy (before the shotgun).

  Oh, shit. Looks like the Oblivare opted for another ‘mild disagreement.’

  All hell breaks loose. Aziz lunges at the curator, who wallops him in the head, sending him staggering to one side, so cross-eyed and derpy he looks like he forgot his own name. The curator raises both eyebrows, seemingly impressed by the man surviving the hit. Wolent’s guys pounce, Virgil and Stan tackling the driver while Clark and Jay go after Ladonna. No surprise they’re avoiding the curator after what he did, but I don’t get the sense they’re scared of him as much as trying to weenie smash. Not literally. ‘Weenie smash’ is my Dad’s term—and now Sierra’s—for boss fights in video games where you have to fight a powerful enemy plus a bunch of weak ones at the same time. Sometimes, the easiest way to win those fights is to initially ignore the big boss and kill the little guys first. Hence, smashing the weenies. It’s not a dick joke.

  It goes about as well as I expect.

  The curator refuses to merely spectate. He wades in, throwing Wolent’s guys around like ragdolls. Ladonna mostly keeps her distance, guarding the motel room door. My guess is the curator is old enough to see into at least one of the enforcers’ heads and knows I’m out here waiting to grab the reliquary and he’s told Ladonna to keep guard on it. She’s not smacking Clark and Jay around anywhere near as bad as what the curator did to Donnie and is presently doing to Virgil and Stan. The old silver-haired dude is basically juggling inflatable fake vampires.

  I really ought to do something more than stand here, but duh. Any one of Wolent’s enforcers would break me in half, and he’s laughing at them. The only reason I stood toe to toe with them last time is a sneak attack plus having a sword. A good blade and knowing how to use it makes up for a surprising amount of strength disparity. In a fist or claw fight, any of them would mop the floor with me. Wonder if the guys brought their swords and left them in the van?

  Ladonna pounces at Clark, trying to grab him, but he spins around in a reversal, catching her in a headlock. She promptly melts away into a cloud of black smoke and reforms a step to his left. The driver bowls into Jay’s side, picking him up into a charge before ramming him into a parked pickup truck. Jay’s elbow leaves a dent in the metal. He grimaces in pain, but I don’t think the bone snapped.

  Oh hell. Can’t just watch.

  I launch myself into the air, extending claws.

  Clark spins away from Ladonna and grabs the driver, attempting to ram him headfirst into the pickup. He gets his legs up in time to plant his boots on the door, knocking the truck a few inches to the right with a loud squelch of tires on paving, sparing himself a broken skull.

  Ladonna rakes claws across Clark’s back. He grunts in pain, losing his grip on the driver.

  The curator blurs over to Jay, calmly grabs him by the back of his head, and drives him face down at the side of the pickup truck. Jay manages to get his hands up in time to catch the edge of the truck bed, but isn’t strong enough to stop his forehead from pounding another dent in the steel. Blood sprays out to the side; Jay collapses to the pavement, moaning.

  I dive out of the air, raking all ten of my claws down the driver’s back. He lets out a shriek like someone clamped a hot waffle iron closed on his man bits. The instant my sneakers touch the ground, the world around me shifts. I’m back at the sidewalk. Driver, curator, and Ladonna all look around bewildered, evidently having no idea why Driver has claw wounds.

  Glim’s next to me, hand on my arm. He’s also giving me a ‘what the hell are you doing?’ stare, as if he caught his nine-year-old kid sister playing with a gun. No, he doesn’t have a kid sister. Just saying.

  “Ehh, oops.” I cringe. “Thanks, hard to just watch them get the crap kicked out of them.”

  Clark takes advantage of the driver’s momentary pain paralysis, walloping a haymaker into the side of his head that throws him tumbling over the pickup truck, spinning feet over head like a thrown hatchet. Driver crashes through the side window of a parked silver Toyota six spaces away.

  The curator grabs Clark by the throat. As calmly as if tossing aside an empty candy bar wrapper, he flicks his arm to the side, launching Clark into the wall of the 7-11 next door to the motel, like a hundred feet away.

  Virgil howls in pain, staggering back from Ladonna, who’s using him as a scratching post. She’s so much faster than him, his attempts to defend himself appear more like random flailing.

  Aziz, finally in control of his senses, stomps over and grabs for her. She blurs away, dodging his massive hand. Still, she’s off Virgil. Stan lets out a grunt. The driver’s back. He’s charged linebacker style at Stan from the side, lifting the dude off his feet and carrying him into the motel wall.

  We are making a crapton of noise. This has to end fast or there will be dead cops.

  Ladonna backs away from Aziz, wide-eyed. Wow, something finally seems to have broken past her indifference. She looks sincerely worried. He’s enough of a distraction for Virgil to land a punch to the side of her head. The physical power of it compared to her weight flings her into the Room 11 door, mostly breaking it off its hinges. However, she bounces off to her feet, giving him an irritated look way too close to how Sierra stares at Sam whenever he ambush-bonks her with a pillow.

  Roaring in anger, Jay runs in, arm cocked back in an amazingly telegraphed punch—I mean this is practically a fifteen-second slow-mo close up scene from a more recent Rocky movie. You know, one of those overly indulgent shots where Stallone’s jowls wobble on screen as he bellows out all the emotional pain and whatever angst he’s going through being a boxer. Driver’s too busy watching the curator slow-walk after Stan to notice Jay coming. The punch liquefies driver’s jaw, flattening him to the pavement so hard his feet whip up into the air.

  This buys Stan a reprieve. He takes a second to recover his balance.

  Alas, the curator blurs over to Jay, backhanding him in the face. The old man’s strike smashes Jay’s skull like a baseball bat splattering a rotten pumpkin. Jay goes down, a third of his head missing.

  “Dammit. I have to do something.” I go to leap into the air again, but Glim grabs me.

  He’s right, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it, or stop trying to stupidly involve myself in a fight I’m not high enough level for. What the hell is wrong with me? I hate fighting. Why am I struggling to rush in there knowing I’d only get one-shotted?

  Aziz emits a scary deep growl and punches at the curator. The old man blurrily dodges, warping around behind the Moroccan Hulk only a little slower than teleportation. An ‘I win’ smile starts to form on the curator’s lips—at least until Aziz swings his left arm around equally as fast, seizing the old guy by the shoulder, holding him still while spinning the rest of the way around and hammering his enormous fist into the man’s face.

  The curator’s head simply ceases to exist.

  Aziz continues rage-screaming while pounding his knuckles repeatedly into the top of the curator’s torso, further tenderizing a formerly human body into a semiliquid state. Purple glowing mist seeps out of the lump of meat formerly known as the curator, but the beating continues.

  Uh oh. He’s upset. Beast mode activated, as they say, literally.

  Oh, damn. I gawk. I didn’t think it was possible to kill a vampire from blunt force. We’re supposed to be able to come back from anything short of sunlight, fire, or acid baths. Maybe the soul inside the curator said ‘screw this’ and left. For all I know, they can choose to abandon a body at any time. Could be that Oblivare don’t heal like us since they claim already-dead corpses to inhabit. I really don’t want to believe Aziz is so strong he breaks the laws of the Universe.

  Virgil, Clark, and Stan jump on the driver. It’s ov
er fairly quick and not at all in a pleasant manner—for the driver.

  Ladonna gawks at Aziz continuing to mash the curator more and more into a pulp. She’s got the same expression of terrified awe on her face I’d have after witnessing someone smash Aurélie. Weird, I didn’t get ‘elder vibes’ from the curator, but he definitely had the strength and speed of one. I also never got too close to him, and maybe he’s concealing his age somehow. Or was.

  Aziz finally appears to realize he’s making a mess hitting a lump of useless meat. He stops whomping on the remains, looks around as though he’d slipped and done something socially questionable at a fancy party, then tosses the corpse aside and faces Ladonna. Stan and Clark walk toward her, as does Virgil, though he’s moving a little slower thanks to claw wounds.

  Now’s my chance. I fly across the parking lot to Room 11. Ladonna has zero interest in fighting four vampires herself—especially Aziz—and breaks for the motel room. We reach the door roughly at the same time. She grabs me, trying to pull me out of her way so she can get the reliquary. I cling to the doorjamb, my claws cutting trenches in the drywall. Damn, this wench is strong. Aziz pounces, grabbing her from behind. She keeps holding me. Aziz pulls on her, which pulls on me, lifting the two of us off our feet. Whee. I’ve always wanted to become a vampire paper doll.

  Upon realizing who grabbed her, Ladonna gives a yelp of alarm and disintegrates into a cloud of black fog. The instant she’s no longer pulling at me, my effort to cling to the motel drills my shoulder into the doorjamb. I manage to get my feet under me. She reappears a few steps away, looks rapidly back and forth between me blocking the doorway, Aziz reaching for her, and the other three guys approaching.

  Her expression’s about ninety percent worry, ten percent a disparaging remark about my parentage.

  An instant before Aziz grabs her again, she poofs into a cloud of inky mist, which rapidly shrinks into the form of a huge blackbird. Her dress, boots, and belt fall to the ground. In seconds, the bird’s gone, weaving between buildings out of sight across the street.

  Son of a bitch. That damn blackbird. She was following me.

  And… wow. So damn cool. A vampire turned into a freakin’ blackbird. That’s awesome.

  I gawk. Okay, maybe even fangirl a little. Yeah, she’s evil, could kill anyone without guilt, and a threat to both mortal and vampire civilizations alike, but I still gaze in awe.

  “You all right, Miss Sarah?” asks Aziz.

  “Yeah.” I tug at my hands. “My claws are kinda stuck in the wood, but otherwise, I’m okay.”

  “Did she do something to your mind?” Aziz gingerly pinches each of my claws in two fingers and tugs them out. Can’t say it’s comfortable, but it doesn’t hurt. “Heck of a grip, Miss Sarah.”

  “No. I’m just… wow. It is possible for vampires to turn into animals. Sure, she’s totally crazy, but that’s pretty damn cool. Is it bad I kinda wanna watch The Crow again now?”

  Aziz chuckles.

  I look down from the sky at him. A little blood trickles from his right ear. My brain attempts the math problem of comparing the curator’s backhand slaps throwing people fifty, sixty feet in the air and crushing skulls to Aziz barely moving when hit. It gives up. I’ll work on easier math… like calculus. Wait, no. I am done with it.

  “Umm.” I point at the dress on the ground. “She left her stuff behind. I thought clothes and such turned into fog with the vampire.”

  “No.” Aziz shakes his head—someday, an intrepid team of explorers may discover he has a neck—“Mortals changed it for the stories. British imperialists and Americans cannot handle nudity.”

  I laugh. “Yeah, seriously. People complain more about a bare nipple popping out by accident on TV or swear words than murder or extreme gore in movies.”

  Aziz shrugs. “People are strange.”

  “They sure are. Thanks for saving our asses.” I hug his left arm. “That curator guy was crazy powerful. If you weren’t here…”

  “Oh, yes. Speaking of which… I better get the flamethrower.” Aziz starts walking off to the van.

  “Uhh, you seriously have a flamethrower?”

  “I do,” says Aziz without slowing or looking back.

  Clark and Stan drag/carry Jay and Donny’s limp bodies to the van. A bashed-open skull is basically a three-Advil headache for a vampire, as long as no one burns them to permanent death before they wake up. In a way, it’s less painful than claw wounds. Virgil’s going to be hating unlife for a week or so.

  “A flamethrower…” I shake my head in disbelief. “Don’t wanna know.”

  I find the reliquary on the table. The three-foot-tall marble-patterned jar looks innocent. However, it gives off a palpable feeling of malice. This thing totally wants to kill me. I’m not even going to touch the little teapot-like lid on the top. No idea what the glowing purple runes etched on the lid say, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s ‘do not open.’

  Glim meets me on the sidewalk outside the motel room.

  “Here.” I hand him the reliquary.

  He takes it.

  “You rock. Thanks for saving my ass.”

  Fwoosh.

  A wave of heat washes over me as the wall lights up orange. Glim flinches as well.

  The driver, draped over what’s left of the curator, goes up in a bonfire. Aziz holding a flamethrower in one hand, its fuel tank in the other, looks like a normal person running around with a weed sprayer. Stan’s dealing with a few curious mortals in other motel rooms, making sure they go back to sleep and remember nothing.

  “Well, that’s one problem solved…” I sigh.

  “One problem?” Glim peers at me.

  “Still have someone out there making baby vampires in large numbers.”

  “Ahh.” He nods once.

  I stare into the flames consuming the two bodies. “Oblivare, huh? Well, they found oblivion all right.”

  26

  A Ghostly Loose End

  Glim looks the reliquary over, gets an urgent look in his eye, and takes a step back.

  “Oh, wait…” I hold up a hand. “Before you disappear…”

  “Hmm?” He tilts his head.

  I gesture at the ghost of John Trujillo and explain what happened to him. “Is he dead? Or can the Oblivare soul be kicked out of him? Last I saw, his body was alive.”

  “We will need to bring his body to Eidolon, too. If, of course, he is still alive.”

  “Feels like it.” John nods.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Yeah. I left him in the basement of a parking garage downtown. Corner of Second Ave and Union Street.”

  Glim takes my hand. “Think of the place.”

  I close my eyes and do my best to focus on the memory.

  Gravity becomes highly confused. It’s as if I’m a pet mouse accidentally thrown in the washing machine, except for not drowning. I catch a fleeting glimpse of a weird, dark landscape whizzing by on all sides for only a few seconds before a bright hole seems to spring out of the ground and ambush us from the front. Next thing I know, we’re in the hallway by the generator room—and I fall over.

  “Apologies,” says Glim.

  “It’s fine. I remember. Shadow jumps are disorienting.”

  He smiles in a ‘maybe to you’ manner, making me chuckle despite wanting to throw up. It sure feels like teleportation, but we didn’t. He basically pulls us into an alternate dimension where time and distance don’t follow the same rules as our world. Shadows literally become shadow material there. Me? I stay somewhat solid, hence the nausea and dizziness. At least he didn’t have to squeeze me through a quarter-inch gap under a door this time.

  Clanking and roaring fill the hallway, coming from the generator room.

  “Sounds like he’s okay… and awake.” I push myself upright.

  Glim tucks the reliquary under his left arm, opens the door to the generator room, and gives John’s body a once-over. “Should be doable. I don’t understand any of t
he things Eidolon works with, but I do recognize this as an extreme possession.”

  “What makes it ‘extreme?’” I tilt my head. “A viral marketing campaign?”

  “Heh.” Glim chuckles. “His spirit is outside the body. Ordinary possession doesn’t evict the owner of the body.”

  “Is this like common?” I furrow my brow. “Wait, I guess it is. The mystics did the same thing to Sophia.”

  “Generally speaking, demons possess without displacing the soul inside the body. Other sources of possession ‘steal’ the bodies.” Glim tries to look innocent. “I’ve heard of a few creatures capable of this, but none are in North America.”

  “Small favors.” I cringe.

  The possessed John glares at us. His wrists are bleeding a little, but it appears I positioned him hugging the machinery in a way he didn’t have enough room to move or inflict serious damage to himself.

  Glim grasps the man’s shoulder, and both vanish in a whorl of blackness.

  Ghost John glances at me. “What now?”

  “You should probably follow your body. I’m guessing this Eidolon guy has a way to evict the dark energy so you can get back in. Might want to stay close by so you can jump in.”

  “Great.” He exhales. “I’m gonna need to come up with one hell of a cover story to explain where I’ve been all day to my captain.”

  I blink. “Won’t the vampire you’re enthralled to make all awkward questions go away?”