The sword struck against them with a loud ringing sound as though it had been metal on metal. The blow drove her to the floor. The jolt to her arm flooded her body and she cried out.
He reached down and grabbed her throat. The vampire lifted and slammed her into the wall, nearly knocking the wind from her. The bolt was still in her shoulder and as the tip hit against the wall, the pain was so intense her eyesight wavered.
Calico slashed at him, raking the arm holding her. He hissed and let go, raising the sword. She swiped wildly at his abdomen, but he leapt back too quickly. Her claws embedded into the drywall. She tore them free and jumped away as the sword struck the floor where she’d just been.
She frowned at an intense white dot on the vampire’s pant leg—a small nearly round ray of sunlight through the drywall.
The vampire lunged at her. She rolled and got her right claws up to deflect the blade. Lorcán grinned savagely and raised the sword again. She kicked out, smashing his knee, bending it sideways with a sickening snap. He fell against the wall, crying out.
She pushed herself to her knees. He used the wall to keep himself upright, balancing on one leg, swinging the sword at her. She jumped out of range. The two stared murder at each other. Lorcán straightened his busted leg.
Calico gripped the bolt, took a few quick breaths, and yanked. She fell to her knees from the pain, but thankful the point was smooth. Tossing the bolt to the side, she pulled a stake from the Velcro around her calf. She used the burned hand. She had no choice, her other arm nearly useless.
Lorcán hobbled toward her and swung. The blade whistled through the air. She ducked and jabbed with the stake. She wasn’t aiming for his chest, only wanting to get him away from her. The stake pierced his inner thigh, just below his crotch. With no bones to deflect it, she drove it in until her hand met his flesh.
He howled and stumbled away. She let him go and moved to the wall, embedding the claws of her right hand deep into the drywall. She brought up both feet, one after the other and, for a moment, crouched on the wall before straightening her legs, pulling loose a hunk. She twisted and landed on her feet. The hole was roughly a foot round with sunlight punching through.
As Lorcán pulled the stake from his leg, she attacked the hole, clawing at it to make it bigger. She’d gotten it about three-feet long, but only a little more than a foot wide because of the wood studs on either side.
The vampire came at her again. She parried his stroke with her claws and danced away from the wall. He turned with her. The sunlight behind him lit him from mid-torso to his knees. She hoped that would be enough and charged, a guttural yell tearing from her mouth. He didn’t have time to do anything but point the sword in her direction.
She didn’t care, letting the blade pierce her abdomen. It slid effortlessly through her body. She was surprised she could feel how cold the metal was inside her. Lowering her shoulder, she struck Lorcán just below his chest, driving him into the opening she’d made. He fell into it part way, but then his body stopped, wedged between the two wood studs.
Calico unsheathed her back claws, digging them into the hardwood floor. With her shoulder and face against his chest, she sank her front claws into his abdomen and pushed inexorably forward, thinking of Tabby. Mom. Dad. She wept and kept pushing.
As Lorcán beat at her back impotently, his body crumpled into the opening, giving him no leverage to push against her. And she wasn’t going to stop, no fucking way, pulling one leg forward, sinking the claws into the floor, then doing the same with the other, driving him through the opening until he was nearly doubled over.
Calico felt her life waning. Felt her mind dimming, turning to black. “Not yet,” she muttered, tasting her own blood. She coiled both legs for one last push, sinking her back claws deep into the wood floor. Then with a scream that tore at her throat, she surged forward one final time.
With a crash of glass, the two tumbled out into blinding sunlight. The vampire screamed and flailed his limbs as smoke engulfed his head. He burst into flame in those two or three seconds before they both hit the asphalt with a sickening thud.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
“Hi, kitty.” Calico’s cat companion, Cait Sidhe, stood in front of her, a slight purple outline in the dark void, along with her gold eyes and heart-shaped tuft of white fur on her chest. And she purred. Why not? If this was the afterlife, then all their worries and fears and anxieties and whatever else were gone.
“Will I see my parents?” she said. She regretted that she couldn’t see Tabby.
She had so completely failed her sister. A terrible sadness smothered her like a summer deluge of rain. The cat started to fade or maybe the rain was washing it away. Then she heard someone walking, the footsteps receding.
As she opened her eyes, she realized she was lying on a cold hard surface. When she looked down, she could see her upper torso before a white sheet of plastic, or whatever it was, blocked the view of the rest of her body. She raised her hands as far as the white material would let her. There was a zipper running down it from above her head and disappearing down the front. The afterlife was full of surprises.
Calico tried to find the head of the zipper to open it, before she chuckled. What the hell was she doing? She unsheathed her claws and shredded the material. She sat up through the opening.
Calico laughed, a short hard bark. She was in the freakin’ morgue.
She swung her legs off the metal table and untangled herself from the rest of the body bag. She was surprised it was a white bag—on TV they were always black. Sitting there, she looked down at her stomach. There was no pain from the sword blade that had impaled her, but there was a bloody hole in her t-shirt and—yup—in the back of the leather jacket. She ripped the t-shirt open. There was dried blood on her skin, but no wound. No scar.
“Huh.”
She reached toward her shoulder where the crossbow bolt struck her, but her burned hand didn’t make it that far as she stared at it—it wasn’t burned anymore. The skin was completely unblemished. She flexed. There was no pain.
“Huh.”
She looked around the room but didn’t see the sword. She then put her finger into the hole the arrow made in Tabby’s jacket but didn’t find a hole in her shoulder. Healed.
Shaking her head in amazement, Calico jumped down. She was still dressed, so maybe she’d only just gotten to the morgue.
Well, of course she’d only just gotten there, she was still in the body bag. She raised her left hand. It wasn’t quite as black from touching the daemón, but it wasn’t back to normal either. She flexed it and it didn’t feel quite right. Still a bit weak and sore. But overall, she felt remarkably well, except that she was hungry and thirsty.
She thought about leaving but stopped. She had to see Lorcán’s body.
On another table was another white bag. She unzipped it. The body inside was charred black. Calico sighed, feeling more relief than she thought she would, a burden removed from her shoulders.
But that feeling didn’t last long, replaced by anger. Hatred. She unsheathed her claws. The feelings that roiled inside her caused the bright fluorescents of the room to dim as her mind raged. A low threatening growl of a cat came from her lips.
There was no conscious thought to what she did next. Rather, the anger and hatred reached a tipping point. It wasn’t until she’d shredded his body and scattered small black shards across the once clean room that she regained control of herself.
Breathing hard, she said, “Heal from that, asshole.”
A third body bag held Lieutenant Evers. Poor guy. He never should have been there. His throat was punctured and torn; his body covered in his own blood.
Calico moved to the next exam room and found the MMA vampires. One was already out of its body bag on a metal table. Laid out on a cart nearby were various implements for an autopsy.
She picked up some kind of small shiny saw and quickly disconnected the vampire’s head from its body. Unzipping the other two
bags, she did the same to the second one. The third was already decapitated by her claws earlier.
Calico frowned at the saw and sighed. She moved back into the room with Evers. She didn’t know if he might become a vampire or if he was dead-dead, but she couldn’t risk it. She sawed off his head, feeling horrible about it.
Then she realized she should have worn gloves. She went to a sink and used wet paper towels to wipe down the handle and then left the saw.
The blade gleamed in the basin with semi-coagulated blood dripping from it. Calico shook her head. How had she gone from normal-ish, twenty-something party girl to dismembering vampires and a human without a second thought? She turned on the water, dipped her head under the faucet, and drank deeply.
Calico managed a smile as she left the room, imagining the coroner and staff wondering what the hell happened. There was a disappearing female victim, the total destruction of another victim, and the additional decapitation of three others.
She managed to get outside without running into anyone, only needing to avoid a woman near the front of the building. The sun fell toward the west. Calico looked back at the single-story tan building. Metal letters on the wall near an unassuming front door read JACKSON COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER.
She looked beyond the building. Where the hell was she? She started walking. It was dusk by the time she located the downtown area. From there, it took quite some time to find landmarks that were familiar, leading her back to Lorcán’s building.
The cops were gone. There was yellow tape across the back door, but it was unlocked from when she’d ripped it open. Calico ducked inside and went to the stairwell to retrieve her stuff. She checked her phone, expecting maybe a message or two from Lizzi. Instead, Stephanie and the other girls had blown up her text message inbox with over a hundred texts. She missed her girls but deleted the messages unread.
Sighing, Calico started for the back door when she heard a noise from above. Another of Lorcán’s vampires returning a night too late? She went up the stairs on tiptoes. The second floor was quiet. She went to the third and saw that the cops had triggered the booby traps heading up the stairs to the fourth floor. Hopefully none of them were injured. But the sound came from the third floor. Footsteps.
The door was propped open and the dim overhead lights were on. Calico peered around the corner of the doorframe and saw Myron.
She knocked and he turned, probably expecting it to be another cop. His mouth moved but no sound came out. She smiled and stepped in. There were several tape outlines of bodies along with those little yellow numbered markers scattered about.
Finally, Myron said, “It can’t—but how? You were dead. You fell out the window!”
She shrugged. “Jumped, actually, but I’m feeling a lot better.”
“Am I crazy? Is that it? I’m imagining all of this. You’re not real. None of this is real.”
“Honestly, that would be the best thing for you to believe.”
“What, better than ‘vampires are real?’ And you’re one of them?”
“A vampire? No, I’m not.”
“You’re not human. You survived falling four floors onto asphalt with a sword stuck inside you. And the other guy—”
“Lorcán.”
“That was his name? He was a vampire, right?”
She nodded.
“Well that guy burst into flame. I mean, he caught on fire, right there on the ground as we watched him. First his head and hands and then his whole body. And the dude was still alive, kicking and screaming. We tried to put him out, but we didn’t have anything to smother the flames. It was—Jesus, it was horrible.”
“Thank God you didn’t put out the flames,” said Calico.
“Hmm?” He looked confused for a moment, then realization spread across his face. “Oh, shit. He’d have come back?”
“Yeah, if you’d covered him from the sun too quickly. You really didn’t want that asshole coming back.”
Myron’s face changed expressions as he seemed to be working through possibilities. Then he frowned and said, “Did you do that to him at the ME’s?”
“You mean the morgue? Yeah, I lost my shit for a couple of seconds.”
“There’s a lot of buzz about that. They think some associate of yours stole your body and went medieval on the others.”
“Good. Best they don’t think I’m alive.”
“The police?”
She shook her head. “No. Lorcán’s crowd, so to speak. But, yeah, the cops, too. Probably best no one knows I’m still alive. Easier for me to do my job.”
“Your job? This is your job?”
There was no hesitation when she said, “This is my dark vigil.”
“Seriously, what the hell is going on?”
“The less you know, the better.”
“I want to know. Need to know. Are there more of those things in Kansas City?”
“Vampires? I doubt it.” The image of Ciarán carrying Tabby came back to her. There was at least one vampire left in the city along with her sister—and the daemón.
“I have to go.” She turned and walked away.
Before she got to the door, Myron called after her, “Let me help.”
She stopped but didn’t turn around. “You don’t want to do that. There aren’t just vampires out there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things you can’t even imagine.”
“But I have to do something after what I’ve seen. I can’t ignore it.”
She took another step toward the door.
“Your sister.”
Calico turned back. “What about her?”
“I can help you look for her. I mean, I’m a cop. That’s part of my job.”
She knew he was right, and she could use the help, but the thought of getting a—a what? A civilian? A human? Yes, to both. The thought of getting a human involved and probably killed made her hesitate. “You couldn’t tell anyone else. If you put out an APB, or whatever you call it, you’d just be getting your buddies killed. Hell, just knowing me could get you killed. If the daemón—”
“The what?” His face went slack.
She nodded. “A daemón took control of my sister. And, to be honest, I have no idea how to fight it. If I even can fight it.”
“But you have to try, right?”
She nodded.
“Well, so do I. After seeing this, I have to try, too. Please.”
Calico bit at the inside of her cheek before she sighed. “Fine.”
Myron looked happy, but that wouldn’t last.
“First things.” She pointed at the floor and froze. Without Tabby lying on top of it she got her first good look at the circle. It was the daemón’s rune. “There was a wood box over there. I need that back. And upstairs were a bunch of old books wrapped in trash bags. I need those, too. Can you get those things?”
Myron hesitated, but then he nodded. “They’ll be locked up in evidence. But I’ll figure a way to get them to you.”
“Thanks. Oh, and how’s Pomeranian doing? Is he okay?”
“Who?”
“Palmerroy. Your cop buddy.”
Myron looked exasperated. “That’s another thing!”
Calico smiled and left.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
It took him several days, but Myron showed up at Calico’s hotel with over a dozen plain brown boxes, each containing multiple volumes of the family bandruí chronicles. One of the cardboard boxes contained a wooden box with runes cut into it. Calico lifted it out and caressed it, thinking how First Sister had built it, carved the runes, held it.
“What’s the box for?”
“When the druid priests released the daemón, First Sister trapped it in this box.”
“Oh. Wow. So how did it end up here in Kansas City?”
“No idea. Lorcán must have found it somewhere. Thanks for getting all this. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have it back again.”
“No problem. Well, actually
, if anyone finds out I’ll be out of a job and in jail.”
“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” she said with a tired smile. “Still no word on my sister?” She knew there wasn’t, or he would have led with that.
He shook his head. “Sorry. I hate to say it—”
“You don’t have to. I know they could be quite literally anywhere in the world by now.”
“But I’ll keep looking and keep it low-profile.”
“Thanks.” She frowned and looked at all the boxes. “Guess there’s no reason to stay here any longer. I’ll ship these to myself in Denver and head back.”
“Give me a holler when you get settled wherever you end up. I want to keep helping. Please.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Thanks. I will.”
After he left, she went back to her computer and wrote a note to Lizzi. They’d been in communication since the woman found Lorcán’s location.
The family chronicles are back in my possession.
She deleted the snarky comment that she had them despite Lizzi’s best efforts.
And I wanted to let you know that the vampires are all dead. You should be safe now.
Calico thought about telling her all was forgiven, except that it wasn’t. But she wasn’t as upset or disappointed as she’d been. She looked at all the boxes. What a pain it was going to be to ship them back to Denver, just to move them again when she figured out what she was going to do.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Detrick Palmerroy sat in the waiting area of the Kansas City International Airport. Calico smiled as she sank into the chair next to him.
He asked, “So what now?”
The smiled vanished. “Lot of cleaning up to do in Denver. Need to get all my folks’ stuff out of their house so I can sell it. Shit. Clear out my own place. Figure out where I’m going to live.”
“Do you have to move?”
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