by Jason Tucker
Del reached for the door handle when he saw a police cruiser slide up to block the driveway. The lights flashed but there was no siren. Two cops got out of the car and walked up to the front door. A moment later and they were inside.
Shit, Del thought. They must’ve found the old woman in Joey’s apartment, and that meant there was no way he would be able to get to Caroline. The only good thing about the situation was that Caroline would be probably spend most of the evening talking with the police. That meant she would be safe. She would believe that her brother murdered an old woman, and the police probably wouldn’t be too kind, believing that she might know where he was. Still, it was better than being vampire chow.
He grabbed his phone from the passenger seat and was about to dial Joey when he saw another vehicle pull up behind the police cruiser. It was a newer model SUV, and Del figured it was the type of thing that a soccer mom might drive. Maybe it was one of Caroline’s friends.
But Del knew that wasn’t the case. Something about the SUV seemed wrong. It came up too fast and it parked too close to the cop car.
Del barely had time to wonder how a vampire could have gotten an SUV when the vehicle’s doors opened and they all piled out. The girl - he recognized her easily enough - moved slowly but with purpose. Others followed, and Del recognized most of them. Two of Rachelle’s hoods, Robens, some woman, and Vincent.
Robens is dead, he thought. Joey said he saw the man’s body. Of course, that would mean that the girl had turned Robens, and she had probably turned Vincent and the others too. That would mean that there were six of them. Not just the girl. This changed things. This changed things big time. No way was he messing with six vampires.
But the cops and that poor woman, Joey’s sister, had no idea what was headed their way. Del at least had the element of surprise. He figured that he couldn’t just let them die.
Never should have gotten out of bed this morning, he thought, as he fumbled for his UV lights and watched the vampires get closer to the front door. The home’s security lights kicked on and bathed the vampires in harmless light. Del could see that their clothes and their faces all looked dirty. Blood, he thought. It’s old dried blood on them.
“Fuck it,” he said and jammed a hand onto his horn. Some plan, he thought. What next? He really had no idea.
The vampires stopped in unison and turned toward his truck. He kept his hand on the horn for a few more seconds to let them know that he was watching them. And then, not knowing what else he should do, he waved at them.
The little girl said something and then three of the vampires - two of Rachelle’s low level goons and the woman he didn’t recognize - rushed toward his truck. They moved quickly. Not with the blinding speed that Joey had described, but still faster than a normal person. Del barely had time to get his UV flashlights turned on before the woman smashed through his passenger side window. She hissed and reached in after him, clawing the air and trying to crawl into the pickup.
Del jerked backwards, heart hammering, and aimed at the vamp’s eyes and flicked his UV flashlights on. The bluish-purple light seared into the vampire woman’s flesh, burning like a laser beam. She shrieked and fell away from the van. The other vampires stayed back. Del swung the lights in arcs, sweeping over the others and making them back further away. Robens and Vincent had joined the others and they were weaving, growling and hissing. The woman was on her knees, ripping at her burned eyes.
Del transferred the light in his right hand to his left and then turned on the truck’s engine. He didn’t know how he was going to get to Caroline, or if it would even be possible. Perhaps he’d only delayed her death while signing the warrant for his own.
He could see the little girl now, moving toward the injured vampire. She was barely visible from his vantage point in the truck, but he could tell that she moved with amazing speed, faster than her fledglings. She crossed the distance and in a single fluid motion tore away the woman vampire’s head. With a toothy smile at Del, the little vampire turned and threw the severed head through Caroline’s living room window.
Crazy little bitch, he thought. Who throws heads through windows?
A second later Caroline’s door opened and two of Los Angeles’ finest stepped outside, likely to see what all the ruckus was about. Or perhaps it was the head that had just come flying through the window. Del figured they probably thought Joey had done it. Their weapons were drawn, but from the looks on their faces, they weren’t expecting a gang of vampires.
Del saw Caroline peering out from behind the cops. One of them used his hand to push her back inside.
“Get on the ground!” one of the cops screamed, as he took aim at the vampires.
“Down, down, down,” shouted the other.
The vampires surged forward, lunging at the cops. The vamps moved quickly, but the quick trigger fingers of the LAPD were able to fire first. The bullets tore through the beasts, rocking them, but they didn’t fall and they barely slowed down.
The vampires lashed out and snatched the cops, as they flailed and continues to fire. They ripped and tore, jerking arms off of bodies and tearing away heads. Then they fell on the officers, ripping at them, bathing in the blood. The only one who didn’t was the girl.
She turned to look at Del, smiled and then stepped into the house.
Del was no hero.
But he wasn’t a coward either.
“Damn it, that boy owes me,” Del said, as he charged out of his truck, a UV flashlight in each hand. He screamed what he thought was a war cry, but probably sounded more like frightened puppy. However, it did take the vampires by surprise, who seemed to have forgotten him once they’d whiffed the scent of blood. They scattered at the lights hit them and fell back away from the door.
Del hustled into the house, still gripping the flashlights tightly, wielding them like miniature light sabers. The little vampire girl was standing over Caroline’s prone and seemingly unconscious form. The vampire had torn away her blouse and was digging sharp and dirty nails into Caroline’s flesh. When Del’s lights hit her, she stiffened and turned, shielding her face. The girl’s skin sizzled, but the light didn’t seem to bother her as much as it had the others.
“Take her then,” the girl said in a surprisingly gravelly voice. She grinned, and Del saw her teeth. Her eyes brightened, and he felt as though she was looking into him. “Take her back to her precious brother. Tell him we are coming. Ask him if he remembers yet.”
Del kept silent and kept his lights trained on her. The vampire’s skin flaked and burned, but she didn’t seem to mind. She seemed to almost relish the pain. And then, in a blur, she was gone.
“Caroline,” he said, keeping eyes on the door. He kept looking at Caroline. Her back was torn up pretty good. It looked like it hurt. “Are you okay. Did she… did she bite you.”
Caroline groaned and then winced. She turned her head to look at Del and her eyes widened. “Who are you? That little girl… the cops… what happened.”
“We gotta go,” Del said.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Where are the police?”
Del thought about the feeding vampires outside. How long would his lights frighten them away? They had to leave, and they had to do it now.
“Come on,” Del said, grabbing her beneath the arm. “I swear I’m not going to hurt you. We gotta get out of here, and we’ve gotta get to your brother.”
“Joey sent you?” she said. He detected bitterness in the voice. “The police said he’s wanted for questioning in a murder. What the hell is happening?”
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Del said. He handed her a UV flashlight. “Sounds silly, I know, but you just point this light at anything that comes toward us. Be careful too. They’re fast.”
“The girl,” Caroline said. “What is she?”
“Not a girl, that’s for damned sure,” Del said. “Explanations later. Let’s move.”
With one arm around Caroline and his other hand sweeping the
darkness outside the house with his light, he stepped outside. The bodies of the cops were there, headless now, just like the vampire woman the little girl had killed. The corpses were alone, fortunately.
“Oh, God,” Caroline said. “This isn’t real. What the hell did Joey do? Cops were saying something about murder.”
Though the vampires were gone, sirens blared in the distance. They were getting closer, and Del didn’t want to be there to try to explain what happened. “Get in the truck. We’ll try to explain later.”
As they pulled away, he reached into his pocket and fished for the cell phone. It wasn’t where it should be, and he figured he must’ve lost it somewhere between the truck and the house. That meant that the police would find it. It was a burner phone, but they probably find his prints on it. He looked into the rearview mirror and thought about going back to get the phone, but he knew the vampires weren’t far away. They could still be watching.
One hell of a night, he thought, looking over to Caroline, who was crying, shaking and obviously in shock.
Chapter Seventeen
“What kind of deal are you talking about?” Joey said. He knew full and well that he couldn’t trust Rachelle. The safest thing to do right now would be to kill her and Carlos where they sat, hope he could kill the other two of her guards that were topside and then find Del. But that would just leave more bodies in his wake, and that’s not something that he was willing to do. He was tired of killing. He’d do it if he had to, but the thought of it turned his stomach now. He thought about Mrs. Golden, and then his mind kept wandering to Caroline.
Joey had so few people in his life that he was close to, he’d never really given much thought to what others felt. When he’d killed for the Giovanni family, he did it because it was his job. They paid him to do it, and that’s what he did.
When he’d first started working with the family, he had figured that it was at least better than sitting in a cubicle or sticking widgets into doohickeys for a living. The money was sure good. But now he knew what others must’ve felt. Families of those he’d killed must’ve sat waiting at home for their loved ones to return, just as he was waiting on Caroline now. How many families had he put through these same miserable feelings? Even the “bad guys” he’d killed had family, right?
He didn’t want to have to kill Rachelle or Carlos. But if they did something to betray him….
Rachelle ran her tongue along her bottom lip. “Here’s the offer. You put that gun away and then we work together to kill the little vampire and her friends.”
“Friends?” Joey said.
“Oh, yes,” Rachelle said. “She’s created others like her now. Your friends Robens and Vincent for starters. Maybe more. She’s got a little army brewing. Wrap your head around that. We lost a couple of men last night. They might be part of her group now too.”
Joey didn’t even know how he was going to face down the girl, and now he had to worry about more of the damned creatures. Sometimes life just wasn’t fair.
“If I work with you, what do I get out of it?”
“You don’t get killed by a vampire,” Rachelle said. “You’d better make up your mind too. It’s dark out, and we have to get Del’s lights on or we have to get back to the mansion where we can make a stand. She will find you.”
“I want to leave when it’s done. I don’t want any of your people following me because I disrespected you or you thought I stole from you or you want to torture me or any of that shit. We kill the vampires and we’re done. I don’t want anything to do with you or your nutty gang anymore. I mean, who the fuck uses vampires? We’re in the twenty first century for fuck’s sake.”
Rachelle smiled. “That’s all?”
“And you leave Del alone. My sister too.”
“I’d almost forgotten about her. Caroline is here name, right?” Rachelle said. “I remember her being nice.”
“Oh, shit,” Carlos said. “She was asking about your family.”
“What?” Joey said. He was right to send Del to Caroline’s house. Before, it was just a hunch that the girl knew about his sister. Now it was a fact.
“The vampire, she was asking about your family. I told her you had a sister here in Los Angeles.”
“Stupid son of a bitch,” Joey said, aiming at Carlos. “You knew what you were doing.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Carlos said, squinting shut his eyes and turning his head away from the gun barrel. “I told you. It was like she was drawing it out of me like she’s some kind of Jedi or something.”
Joey hit redial on his phone. He had to know if Del found out anything about Caroline. The phone rang and Del picked up on the first ring. Except that it wasn’t Del who answered.
“Hello, Joey,” said the gravel throated vampire girl. “Surprised to hear my voice?”
The world in front of him seemed to swim and shimmer, as though nothing were real. He was too late. Del had obviously failed and now they were both dead. Or worse, the vampire had turned them into her friends. He felt his gun arm grow weak. He was able to keep his pistol aimed at Carlos, but he felt his arm wavering.
“Joey, are you there,” Nicolette said. “Do you remember yet?”
“What did you do to them?” Joey said. His heart started to pound, his mouth began to dry.
“Not very polite, are you?” Nicolette said.
“What did you do?” He didn’t care that the beast chose the guise of small child.
“Do you remember?”
“What happened to them?” He would kill her.
“Questions, questions, questions. If I have to make you remember, it’s going to hurt,” she said. “I am coming to find you. We’re already on our way. Are you excited for the reunion?”
The line went dead.
“I take it that wasn’t Del,” Rachelle said. Her voice almost had a purr to it. She seemed to still be enjoying his pain.
“She had his phone,” Joey said. “And Del was at my sister’s place.”
“Sorry,” Rachelle said.
“No, you’re not. You’re a sociopath. You don’t give a shit,” Joey said.
“Pot meet kettle. But I really will miss Del. He was talented,” she replied. Then she smiled. “Now.”
At that word, Carlos launched himself off the couch, knocking the pistol from Joey’s hand as he did. Joey felt one of Carlos’s legs slip behind his own, sweeping it out from under him. The next thing Joey knew, he was defying gravity for a fraction of a second before Carlos landed on top of him, knocking the breath from his lungs. Getting knocked down was becoming a habit that he didn’t like.
He wheezed, trying to get breath, but Carlos’s forearm was on his throat and pressing down. And then he saw Rachelle standing over him. The gun was now in her hands and aimed directly at his head.
Hell, he thought. This is what you get for deciding that you don’t want to kill anymore. He promised himself that the next time he had an inkling that he should just kill someone, he was going to go ahead and to it. Morals be damned.
Chapter Eighteen
“How do you know where we’re going?” Vincent asked. She’d told him to head to Del’s. He’d only been there once, so it was slow going. The scent of blood was thick in the vehicle and it was hard for him to concentrate. He was behind the wheel of the SUV and trying to pay attention to the road. All he wanted to do was taste blood. In the back was the body of the woman Nicolette had killed when they took the vehicle from the lot behind his building.
The other vampires were drunk on blood, doped with the stuff and easy for Nicolette to control. And she was in complete control, or at least she seemed it to Vincent.
Here he was, driving toward who knew what and listening to a living dead girl. Still the fucking toad, he thought, hating himself. All this power he had now and he was still just listening to what people told him to do. How long could he handle that?
“I know where to go because I Gleaned it from that old man,” Nicolette said, staring out the win
dshield at the traffic. In her lap she held a pistol she’d taken from one of the fallen cops. “Just like I was able to Glean everything else I needed to know about Joey from the idiots who thought I was their prisoner. Their minds were weak.”
“Gleaned,” Vincent said. “You used that word before. What does it mean?”
“You will learn to Glean if you stay alive long enough,” she said. “It simply means that I read the surface thoughts to find information. It doesn’t give me all of the details, but it is quite useful. Like a psychic flash. Sometimes it works great, sometimes not. I can go deeper sometimes.”
Vincent nodded, and thought about Nicolette’s choice of words. If you stay alive long enough. He thought about how Nicolette had killed his girl Melanie. Torn her head right off as though she was pulling the head off a doll. Was Nicolette going to do that to him and the others too? Was she going to use them and kill them once she’d tasted her revenge and then go back to her own canal or cabal or whatever the fuck she’d called it?
Then a terrible thought entered his mind. What if Nicolette was able to Glean him right now. He cast a glance at her and she smiled. Fuck, he thought. There was no telling if she could read his thoughts or not, and that was probably just the place she wanted his mind; in a state of fear so he was easier to control.
Always the lackey.
“What do we do when we get there,” he asked.
“They have defenses,” she said. “More of those damnable lights. We need to disable the lights, and then we get to have fun. Do not kill the old man or the woman right away. And leave Joey to me.”
“Of course,” Vincent said, although he felt the familiar claw of fear digging into his scalp. He felt loyalty to Nicolette, and he tried his damnedest to keep his thoughts away from anything that would smack of disloyalty. However, he didn’t want to lose his life because she wanted revenge for… something.
They made a few more turns, and the area was starting to look a bit more familiar to Vincent. He was recognizing a few landmarks, and he knew Del’s place would only be a bit further. He wondered what would be waiting for him when he got there. He was certainly not looking forward to seeing Joey again, and he knew that Del was a gun nut. The handguns might not kill him, but they hurt like a bitch. And he knew Del had things bigger and badder than a handgun.