Murder at Chipmunk Lake

by Mary Hughes

  “Hey, you can’t use him. He’s my excuse.” I pouted. “And we’re not naming him Manfred. Maybe Mandrake. Oh, all right.” I scoped the cage. “Although I’m not sure how I’m going to get it inside to you.”

  “Throw it. The impetus will tear the mesh—or bounce the poker off, in which case you can try again.”

  “Impetus,” Bruce said from behind me. “That’s a good, solid word. I like him.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Julian’s red eyes and lengthening fangs said the favor wasn’t returned.

  “Chill,” I said. “Julian, meet Bruce. He’s a baby vamp who drank your emergency blood supply in return for breaking me in here so I can break you out. Apparently he likes words like impetus.” I sighed. “Why can’t both of you just say power, or thrust?”

  “You.” Julian ignored me to hit the baby vamp his reddest glare. “You will do nothing, either by action or inaction, to allow my wife Nixie or the child to come to harm.”

  “Ow.” Bruce clapped both hands to his head. “Yes master. I hear and obey.”

  “Good.” Julian’s eyes cooled to their normal laser blue. “Nixie, just throw the poker.”

  “Coming.” I had a pretty good arm from Nieman Bar’s Junior Dart League. Oh, and from a girlhood hitting Elena’s second-story bedroom window with a pebble so we could go out at night and have fun. I didn’t ring the doorbell because, hey, parents need their sleep. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

  I aimed the pointy end at one of the mesh’s holes and threw the poker like a javelin. The spike broke through the mesh, yay.

  But its impetus wasn’t enough—the handle got stuck. The front of the poker fell inside the cage, but since the back end was still tangled in the mesh, the tip bounced, whap-whapping against the wire and shooting sparks and a bzzt or two until it finally hung still.

  “That did it,” I crowed. Then I second-guessed myself. “That did do it, right? It’s shorted out?”

  Julian passed a palm along the wire mesh wall next to the poker. “This small section, yes. It’s dead. But the rest is still live.”

  “Dam…dangum it. Liese said there might be zones.” I screwed on my thinking face. “Is it enough to mist out?”

  “Let me try.” He blew his body apart.

  While that pow of exploding mist is exciting for a fast clothes drop for sexy-times, this time it backfired. He was too close to the mesh and his edges caught fire, poof. He snapped back, nose, fingers, eyelashes, and bits of hair in flames. With a vicious “Spucatum,” he slapped himself out, furiously, like he was covered in Valkyrie mosquitoes.

  By the time he finished, his lashes were curled and his eyes were a little wild. “No. Not…give me a minute and I’ll try again.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll short out a few more places.” I reached for the leather end of the poker.

  “Stop.” My husband can’t v-command me but he sometimes tries. “Not we, me.”

  I glared at him. “Does that ever work?”

  “There’s always a first time. Nixie, please. Don’t. I can’t help you if you’re hurt.”

  “No worries. Bruce is here.”

  “One baby vamp is no help if something goes seriously wrong—”

  “Shh! You just had to say that, didn’t you? What if Murphy heard you? Look, if something seriously ab-gefucks, Bruce can call 911.”

  “And they’ll handcuff you to a hospital bed for attempted breakout and I’ll still be caged. I’ll do this—”

  “And if you get zapped, you’ll be temporarily dead and emergency personnel will slab you in the morgue and you’ll heal in front of their eyes—or worse, they’ll stuff you in a crematorium and you won’t.”

  “Go back to the Thunder Tap, where you’ll be safe. Please?”

  Aw, he said please. How could I not? “Sure. I’ll go to the Tap.” And drive past it to the cabin complex, break into the other cabins and borrow all their pokers.

  “I know that look. I’m circumventing you.” Julian grabbed the poker and yanked it through.

  Worry for me plus having his mist fried must’ve affected him, because rather than his usual precision, he pulled way too hard. The poker suddenly tore loose and flipped him around like a revolving door—straight into the mesh beside him.

  There was a zap and his eyes lit up like a meteor. Then he swirled like a drunken top and fell to the concrete with a hard whump and crack.

  And lay there.

  And lay there some more.

  “Hoh-lee shit.” Bruce’s eyes were wide.

  “Don’t swear,” I said automatically. Julian was still laying there and talking was better than being scared. “My baby can hear you.”

  “Baby Bruce?”

  “We’re not naming him Bruce.” I paused. Actually, Bruce was pretty good for a kid, especially if his middle name was Wayne.

  But Julian was still fucking laying there.

  The baby kicked. Poor little Batkid, wasn’t even born before his father was taken out. I put a hand on his tiny foot and blinked stinging eyes.

  “Shouldn’t we go to the Thunder Tap now?” the baby vamp said. “To act on his last wishes?”

  “Last wishes?” I firmed my jaw and fisted my hands. My baby wasn’t being born without a father because of a stupid breakout gone wrong. “No. I’m not abandoning him. Anyway, he’s just unconscious. Not…the other thing.” Though he lay there without breathing, my husband was not dead—at least, not deader than usual. I’d seen his vampire nature heal worse than this. I had to trust he’d be okay. “I’m waiting until he wakes up.”

  “I don’t think you’re thinking this through,” Bruce said. “He’s safe. The electricity that keeps him in pretty much keeps anybody else out, right?”

  “Anyone without a bolt cutters for the lock, or a grounded wire cutters for the mesh, or a bomb for anything or—”

  “I get your point.”

  “Then there’s that giant hole in the wall. Once the sun comes up…I need to be here, in case there’s something I can do.”

  “But he said—”

  “I don’t care what he said. I’m waiting.” I sat right where I was. “You go if you need to. The blood’s in the fridge. Take it.”

  Bruce sank down next to me. “You’re a good person, aren’t you?”

  I blinked at him. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  We waited together. Watching, listening. Thinking. I didn’t come up with a solution but Julian’s color improved from dead white to gray to ruddy and finally faded back to normal. Then, at last, his chest shuddered. His breath sucked in. His chest began to rise and fall.

  When his eyes began to flutter open, inspiration struck.

  “Bruce. We’re leaving.” I jump-heaved to my feet and headed for the hole in the wall.

  “Because he’ll yell if he catches you hanging around?”

  “That too,” I said. “But mostly because I’m getting more metal rods to finish shorting out the cage.”

  Bruce followed me to the hole, where he flinched. “It’s only three minutes to sunrise.”

  “Okay. I’ll get them alone.”

  “That’s not what I meant. We don’t have much time. I didn’t realize it until now, but this hole we made is right under the window.” He followed me out.

  “So?” I pulled out my car keys as I hurried.

  “So it’s facing east. Open at ground level. At sunrise level.”

  I spun in horror and really saw the hole for the first time. “Good grief. Before, we might have had until mid-morning until the sun reached Julian’s cage. Now it’ll be immediate.”

  Unless I acted, now, we were royally screwed. “C’mon.”

  “But the sun—”

  “We’re not going far. Only to the car. We’ll get there and back before you burn.” I braced Snagrat with my arms and pushed off at a brisk lope.

  The baby vamp zipped past me. “What are you looking for?”

  “Tire iron or car jack in the trunk
.” I tossed him the keys and slowed to a grateful limp. “Oil dipstick under the hood.”

  “Right.” He remoted the door locks, zipped to the driver’s door and opened it. Reaching in, he popped both hood and trunk latches in one smooth motion, showing amazing dexterity for a newbie vampire. He must’ve been good with mechanical things as a human. “Dipstick first. It’s longer.”

  “Hurry.” The sky was lightening. Older vamps could take a little direct sun but a newbie would flash-fry.

  “I am, believe me.” A few quick maneuvers netted him the dipstick. With that under his arm, he went to the trunk. “I can see the jack but not the tire iron. There’s a blanket.”

  “That’s a travel blanket—too small to cover the hole, if that’s what you’re thinking. The tire iron is probably under the spare. Take the jack. I’ll come back and get the tire iron if we need it.”

  “You’ll never lift the spare in your condition.”

  “Darn it.” The sun winked over the horizon. “Take whatever you can and go!”

  He grabbed the jack and zipped past me, darting around the building. A wisp of smoke curled back. I started lumbering after him, remembered Julian’s stiletto under the front passenger seat, popped the door and grabbed it, then put a hand under Snagrat and ran as fast as my hip joints let me to the hole.

  “What if it’s not enough?” Bruce was efficiently slapping out small flames on his skin as I crawled through.

  “It’ll have to be.” As I stood, the sun winked through the hole behind me. The trees shuttered out most of it but a shaft lit the concrete floor. It would lengthen as the sun rose, until it swept the inside of the cage.

  “Shit.” Bruce flew straight back from the beam, plastering himself to the far wall.

  I shook my head. “It’ll hit you there. Move north or south. Or better yet, figure out a way to block the hole.”

  “Right.” He trotted around the north of the cage, but the place was too small for that to matter much. It would buy him a minute or two from the rising sun, but no more.

  I turned to the cage. Inside, Julian was sitting up, but only barely. He wavered like he wasn’t in full control of himself, and his eyes were a disoriented violet.

  I slapped out a hand for the jack.

  “Let me,” Bruce said.

  “No. He’s my husband. I’ll do it.”

  “He’s your husband, which is why I do it.” Bruce whipped off his shirt and started wrapping it around one end of the jack. For a new vampire, he looked pretty buff. “He’ll kill me if I even let you breathe the same air as danger.” Standing on the far north side of the cage, he jammed the jack through the mesh. A zap and a sizzle and another zone buzzed and went dark, but Bruce was thrown off his feet and the jack clattered onto the concrete inches from my husband.

  I wrapped a hand under my belly and ran to Bruce’s side. “Are you okay?”

  He blinked. “That hurt.” He opened his palm, red and smoking. “But yeah. I’ll be fine.”

  “Good. Then give me that.” Brash Nixie, punk Nixie, doing Nixie rose inside me. I snatched the dipstick from him.

  “No!” Bruce leaped to his feet and zipped between me and the cage.

  A slurred, drunken-sounding, roared “No!” echoed him from the cage. Julian was starting to wake up.

  Bruce said, “No way. You have the kid to think about.”

  “Damn it, we don’t have time for that!” I tried to dodge around him.

  He grabbed my wrist and spun me away. “Then make time.” His voice turned hard. “You’re a mother now. You may not like it, but you have to think of the baby. Put its needs first. Are you sure this won’t hurt him? Absolutely certain?”

  I stopped. Stopped dodging, stopped running, stopped breathing, my breath frozen in my lungs.

  The fledgling was right.

  Gott. It hurt like he’d ripped out part of my soul. But much as I wanted to reclaim who I was…who I’d always been proud to be…he was right. Arm like lead, I handed him the dipstick.

  He threw it like an extra-long dart. The bare metal tip sliced into the mesh near the jack, then fell like the poker had, shorting out another couple small squares.

  Eyes stinging, I opened Julian’s stiletto and handed it over too.

  Bruce threw it. The blade sliced through the mesh and landed on the inside of the cage. Another small section shorted out. “That’s the last of the metal.”

  “It’s not enough,” I whispered.

  “That’s three sections,” Bruce said. “Can’t he mist through?”

  “Does he look like he can concentrate enough to hold misting?”

  Julian was sitting on the concrete with his head in his hands. He didn’t even have the focus to see the advancing sun creeping up his jeans.

  “That’s a no?”

  “That’s a no. We’ll need to short out a Julian-size area. If only we had more metal.”

  “What about the jack?” Bruce pointed to where it lay, inches from Julian.

  “He’d have to be able to shove it through the mesh. I don’t know if he can.”

  Julian hadn’t moved, or said anything. He’d recover, but not in time to help.

  “Can’t we grab the dipstick then?” Bruce said. “Use it again?”

  “Right.” Without thinking, I reached for where the small rubberized end was still wedged in the mesh.

  “Wait.” Bruce stopped me again. “I’ll do it. The zone at the tip is blown, but the wires around the handle might still be live. You don’t want Baby Bruce hurt.”

  “You save my husband, Bruce can be his middle name.”

  He shot me a quick smile and reached for the handle of the dipstick—and jerked back, fingers bright red. “No go. Not enough sticking out for me to get a hold.”

  “Try the poker. It’s got a bigger handle.”

  “Right.” Bruce eyed cage. “Too bad you used the poker on the east side. That wasn’t smart.”

  Shame and frustration and fear made me growl. “I didn’t know we’d be cutting it this close!” But he was right, with the poker on this side, we’d already have shorted out a big enough section.

  Shoe-tips in the sun, Bruce reached for the poker.

  “Wait. Grab the leather part. That might keep you insulated enough.”

  “Yuh think?” The fledgling teetered on tiptoes, leaning as far forward as he could as the shaft of sun crept higher. He grabbed the tip of the leather and wiggled. The poker came loose…and fell out. “Yay!”

  …on Julian’s side.

  “Damn it.”

  My heart goosed into my throat. “Darn it,” I corrected automatically.

  Bruce came off his toes. The sun, wriggling across the concrete pad like a bright yellow worm, caught his ankle—boat shoe, no socks. His skin turned bright red and started sizzling. “Yowch!” He hopped back.

  My husband’s ankles were protected by jeans and socks, but even he would start to have problems soon.

  His head was still in his hands. He didn’t even seem to notice the burnt smell. My heart beat faster.

  “Julian,” I said. Recovered or not, he had to help now.

  No reaction. The sun crept up his legs, onto his elbow, bent and resting on his knees. The skin started to redden immediately.

  My chest tightened. “Julian, listen to me. You have to do it. You have to pick up the poker. Short out one more section.”

  Nothing.

  “Julian, please.” I was near to crying. “For baby Bruce.”

  Briefly, he stirred. I waited, heart beating in my throat.

  Then, he finally croaked, “Not…Bruce.”

  “Middle name?” Bruce said.

  “Hurts,” Julian said.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I said. “But you have to do it. For our baby. Please? He needs his father. I need his father.”

  “I-I’ll...try.” Julian’s arm extended, hand shaking, toward where the poker lay in the shaft of bright morning sun. As he reached into the advancing sunbeam, his skin
turned the color of boiled lobster. Blisters began to form and burst.

  His hand settled on the poker. He less picked it up than clawed it to his side. His ribs were heaving with the effort.

  “Good,” I said. My lungs were sawing with almost the same difficulty. “Now short out this section. Here.”

  He turned, slowly, achingly. Eyed me with one red eye.

  I hugged my pregnant abdomen. “It’s the final section.” I hoped I was right. “Even if you’re unconscious, Bruce can break the mesh and drag you out.”

  Julian’s hand came up, pointing a finger. I thought he wanted me to do it, despite the baby. But he pointed at the dipstick and nodded at Bruce. “Good. Thinking.”

  Bruce stood straighter. “It was your wife’s idea, but I snatched the metal out of the car before the sun got me.”

  Pfft. Male bonding. They pick the worst times.

  “Julian, just do it.” I covered my eyes with one hand, then on second thought covered my tummy with the other. “Try not to fry yourself too badly.”

  Julian wedged the poker handle between both his hands, jabbed the metal end into the bottom of a dead section of mesh, and let it drop.

  It shorted out the bottom panel. Bruce tore my husband free.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I gave my husband a small donation to speed his recovery. Bruce surprised me by offering too. While Julian revived I ran outside and grabbed the car blanket from the trunk. By that time Julian was better and between us we got the fledgling covered and hustled out to the car. Julian rehypnotized the commissioner as I got behind the wheel.

  Moments later Julian skidded into the passenger seat, slammed the door and hunkered down. He was smoking out his ears.

  I put the car in reverse and lumbered along the ruts. “Everything okay?”

  “No. I managed to make him forget the breakout and Bruce and you coming back, and put him to sleep, but you and I are already embedded in his conscious memory. As soon as he wakes up he’ll be coming after us.”

  “Or if the deputy wonders why you never made it to the county lockup for interrogation…” I bounced onto the main road, put it in drive, and tore a hole in the pavement accelerating. “We have to get out of here.”

  The moment we got to the cabin I ran inside and started throwing stuff back into suitcases.