Yashar shrugged and asked, “Shall I take your coat?” as he opened the foyer closet.
Garin said, “No, I’m expecting we won’t be staying long.”
Yashar slid the closet door back, “Sure. My study is to the left.” He started in, “A few months back I began noticing inconsistencies in the company’s Accounts Payable.”
We entered the large ornate study that consumed more space than my entire apartment. A fireplace with a fake fire danced at one side with a fan blowing sheaves of plastic while lights flickered and glowed under it. It only gave an impression of fire if you didn’t look closely, but otherwise gave a cold inhuman undead fire.
“Here, please be seated.” He pulled side chairs over for us, “You can see the papers I’ve spread on my desk.” His desk clear of the usual knick knacks someone might have scattered across their workspace. A computer monitor glowed on a back sideboard with a keyboard leaning haphazardly against it. The desk indeed covered with papers.
Garin said, “Those are newspapers not financial documents you’ve spread out.”
“But I did choose the finance section. The one with the stock listings.”
I could see layers of papers with bits of masking tape holding the sections together like I used for carving a Halloween pumpkin. I stood up. A hand from behind me pressed firmly on my shoulder and pushed me hard into the chair.
“I heard you stayed late in the office,” said Yashar.
“How do you know?” asked Garin.
“Your IT department tells me things.”
“But they are employed by the Bank of Draydon not Ramsburgh Industries not my company.”
“That’s how interconnected and entwined a small town is.” Yashar wore a wicked smile. Nodding to me he said, “I see you brought dessert.”
“That’s not right to talk that way.”
“You haven’t been paying attention.” Yashar sat sideways on the edge of his desk with one knee up and the other still firmly on the floor next to Garin, “Amid those papers you signed … you turned the company over to your senior leadership. You authorized share sales to the workers. And we bought them. We bought them all. For a pittance.”
“What?”
“A sad mechanism to make the transfer. I originally attempted seducing Thyia but she rejected my advances. So I had to kill her.”
Garin seethed. His shoulders and arms strained at the large guard holding him.
“That transfer can be nullified,” I said sternly. “It will take a few other filings and some motions but we can get it reversed.” I wiggled under the grip on my shoulder. I couldn’t turn and see who had hold of me. “The paperwork is pretty easy.” I grabbed at the hand on my shoulder trying to loosen it, “The critical patents could be a problem for you. I know where the valid and invalid claims are. You’d be lucky to have any sort of company when we finished. You’d spend years in court depositions. Costing you a lot of time.”
Garin said, “See, I brought protection.”
“No, she forgets, or hasn’t studied you enough. Time to a vampire means none of that fear of the courts and lawyers.” He smiled, the points of his teeth clearly evident, “She did however assure herself of being a slow dessert.”
The hand on my shoulder released as two more muscular vampires joined the one I could now see restrained me. They drew their Katanas.
“Wait!” I yelled, “I’ve studied vampires enough. Let me give my boy a kiss so he doesn’t forget who he’s fighting for.” I surprised the vampires more with my bold interruption than anything romantic. But I took the moment they gave us.
The vampire released me. I crossed the short space and leaned in to kiss Garin. He eased apart the trench coat lapels with his pinkie fingers as he kissed me deeply. Then his hands slid down my neck toward my chest where he clenched his fingers around the grips of his two swords I strapped to myself under the coat. He shoved me back across the room. I landed in a corner overstuffed chair like a baseball into a catcher’s mitt. The blades producing their high and perfectly pitched rings as they slid free from their scabbards.
I couldn’t follow the motions. A flurry of sword blades, cracking and breaking bones, swords hitting swords. A blur. A lamp fluttered in the air and three sword cuts sliced through it before it even struck near me, electricity arcing from the exposed wiring. I rolled over the chair’s armrest and darted behind it. Yashar hid behind his desk. I crouched lower and deeper behind the big chair. I think I saw an angry eye, but maybe not – too quick of a glance.
I peeked from behind the other side of the chair.
I found if I blinked my eyes the motion stopped long enough for my mind to understand the snapshot before the image faded. Otherwise their motion blurred too much.
One of the three guards lay still on the floor. A widening pool of blood encircling the stump of his severed neck. Then a thump sounded as the head bobbed through the office doorway deeper into the house.
One of the guards kicked into Garin and threw him back against the heavily stained wall paneling. He grunted at the impact. He slid down until his feet touched the ground and charged into the guards. A guard’s leg spun out of the turmoil. Garin kicked the guard’s remaining leg so he toppled over.
Garin blocked blows from the standing guard as the fallen guard clawed across the floor to retrieve his leg and reattach it. Garin leaped over a flashing sword and landed on the crawling guard. His weight and suddenness a surprise flattened him and Garin whisked his blade through the guard’s neck. His head spun by the fireplace on its ear like a top.
The last guard circled Garin. They met and struck into each other
A bloody mist enveloped their moving forms amid the clashing steel blades.
Bits of Garin came off in chunks hacked from him a piece at a time. He fell to the ground. Garin! He slowed. While I could see the guard dangerously wounded, Garin only had a single weak sword defending against the guard’s pair.
Something clamped my ankle. I looked and in horror saw that Yashar gripped my ankle. I hugged the chair leg but the chair only spun around after me as he dragged me away. The chair wedged against a table and my fingers couldn’t hold any longer. He flipped me through the air. The coat came off my arms. He flopped me on the desktop. In front of my eye when my head hit the desk the block letters of an article title shouted, “Sell short!”
Yashar flipped me over and held my shoulders. He opened his mouth and came at me.
I brought my legs up against my chest and kicked at his face with both feet. My hands trying to find purchase on the desk to balance myself.
His greedy face powered through my legs. My feet slipped off his cheeks. His evil leer mocked my attempt. He spun me for a better bite and thrust my head aside. Trying to hang on the desk I found a drawer.
I saw the guard drive a sword through Garin’s chest and out his spine. He lifted Garin into the air with that blade impaling and swung back with his other sword to take Garin’s head off. Yashar halted inches from my neck since across my cheek he too saw the end of Garin nearing.
I found something sharp. Something ornate and encrusted lay in the drawer like a fancy pair of scissors. The pointed sharpness cutting my skin as I blindly searched for its handle. I entwined my fingers about the grip and as fast and hard as I could I brought it out of the drawer and stabbed that face next to mine.
My first strike thrust into the vampire’s eye. His head snapped back from instinct and nearly pulled my little weapon from my hand. But that movement freed the blade and bared his chin to me. I took the fancy letter opener and sliced across his neck.
I kept pushing and sawing with the knife until I saw the white of the cartilage cushioning the spine sever. Twin fountains of blood sprayed over me and tapped onto the paper covering the desk. The body of the dead vampire thumped against the desk and hit the floor and chair in a flurry of loose arms and claws. On the way to the floor Yashar’s body sprayed crimson across the tall oak bookcase of financial ledgers behind the desk.
A particularly morbid corner of my mind raced to say, “I guess your accounts will be in the red this year.”
The last fleeting memories flashing through Yashar’s skull as it rolled on the floor contained that letter opener. Like a cowboy kept a backup knife in his boot he stored that knife in his desk. He never imagined his security weapon would be his undoing.
I swung my legs around and jumped forward from the desk. I feared the worst.
Both Garin and the guard sprawled across the floor. They moved slowly from severe wounds inflicted on each other. But the guard appeared either less wounded or he had a naturally more rapid healing ability than Garin’s. The guard fastened a severed arm to his shoulder so it could stick and heal itself. He did the same with his leg and a foot. I watched the bone and sinew lash together. A gruesome race between two undead beings – whichever one proved less dead than the other first would kill the other and continue living undead. I’d spend time thinking about that description later.
I wanted more than the fancy letter opener. I gripped a lost Katana still thrust in a bloody thigh like a restaurant prime rib carving knife. I dropped the letter opener and took the leather bound handle in both hands. The balanced weight of the weapon moved easy in my hands. A few steps further and I stood over the remaining guard sitting up too intent on reattaching limbs and watching Garin.
Salty blood dripped down my face from my earlier kill. Crimson droplets spritzed in my hair hung there like little ruby stones. I raised the sword. I flashed on a scene from a summer golf pro between high school and college telling me how to put my body and shoulders into the swing as much as my arms. The blade swept through the vampire’s neck. Its head rolled off and thumped wetly to the floor. The bloody sword clattered where I dropped it. Would Garin live?
-:- Twenty -:-
I came quickly to Garin’s side. Weak but alive, “you’ve still got your head!” I kissed his torn lips while tears ran down my face. Instinct and emotion helped me find his sword so I could slide my wrist against the sharpness of the steel. I put my arm to his mouth as my blood lit along the slice. The drips came slowly. Like the pendulum clock in his bedroom. But I saw he stirred rapidly. I didn’t let him latch onto me. I needed both hands.
I found chunks of him. My anti-revulsion index infinitely high as I mechanically pressed these pieces of him back together. Like a nurse or a physician or Garin welding the entrails of a car back to life. Or attempting to fix a broken doll from my childhood. I pressed the pieces of this patchwork together again. Garin restored enough with my help that he could stand.
He hugged me, his arms gaining strength, “I’m supposed to protect you.”
“You did. But we’re a team and everyone pitches in.” I glanced at the carnage in the office. Then I took a step back and really looked at the broken and disarrayed furniture and the five headless bodies scattered among livid pools puddling the floor and fan sprays blotting the walls in blood. Vampires can be romantic and admired for their strength and beauty and grace but they are about predatory killing and violent death and no amount of romanticism can hide that truth. I understood now, more than mere words and in a wrenching new clarity, just how monstrous these creatures are that call themselves vampires. My weeping and torn soul understood how mixing with vampires ends badly and that they should be feared. I should escape from this dangerous vampire world but is escape even possible? Am I doomed having seen behind the wizard curtain in Oz and the frightened world through the rabbit hole? Have I tasted the wrong fruit and am cast down from ignorance or thrown from Eden itself?
Wavering moonlight dripped across us as we paused for a heartbeat on the driveway cobbles. “With Yashar dead we should be left alone,” Garin pushed a pair of the guard’s swords in their scabbards toward me urging, “Here, take these, you earned the trophies.”
My fists clenched the hard smooth scabbards as we ran for the darkness at the edge of the brooding forest behind the house. I worried about needing those blades. They would remain part of my life as long as I clung to this vampire world – but those would be concerns for tomorrow. The dew covered leaves of the forest brushed blood from our bodies as we rushed into the shadows.
-:- -:- -:-
Moonbeams filtered through the bare sinew-like branches of an ironwood tree at the corner of the garden shed. The gray light outlined a shadowed woman crouching low. She tugged at the sweatshirt hood covering her dark hair, her black nail polish severe against her ceruse skin. She pressed a button on her phone and slid it to her ear, “Ja, they survived the ambush. Tschuss.” She snapped her phone into her pocket while watching the girl and the vampire disappear into the darkness of the wood. When they cleared from view the observer faded through a break in the hornbeam hedge and the dark cover of a weeping willow draping the edge of the road.
-:- The End -:-
THE NIGHT DISCOVERED
The Vampires of Livix Novel – Volume 2
Paranormal Romantic Suspense
-:- Zero -:-
THE TRUCKER TIPPED his boot into the accelerator. The dual exhausts rattled against the back of the cab as black smoke belched out from the chugging diesel engine. The truck cab lifted reacting to the torque twisting through the drive train into the double set of axles. The wheels ground forward pulling the rig away from the dock.
Checking his mirrors, and by the flickering florescent lighting giving everything a gray tint, he saw the swirling sea of cattle herded deeper into the maze of unloading chutes – filling the front end of the slaughterhouse machinery. He crushed the paper printout signed by the floor foreman against the big steering wheel as he gripped and turned its wide rim. The paper listed the radio frequency ear tags of the hundred and twenty steers he delivered from the half dozen Howell farmers he worked with.
He hopped down from his cab and crunched across the gravel toward the payment office. Exterior wooden stairs led to the second story trucker entrance. The sun bleached treads creaked under his weight while the well used entry door shined in the exterior lights where paint rubbed off from abrasive coats, trousers, and boot kicks. Barn door grab bars bolted to the steel portal replaced the regular door handle that broke off long ago, finally rugged enough to survive the constant abuse by rough and busy truckers. Most truckers got paid for miles driven so sitting at a dock or any other barrier like a door became another pause in the infinite delays that sucked away their money. This trucker worked with the farmers as an independent so he made money directly on the cargo but he still only made money when his wheels rolled.
He came to the glass window and slid the paper dock sheet through the slot.
Cheryl, one of the office accounts payable girls came into view, “… that’s right Joan. The Massai tanker truck will be here soon. He needs that paperwork ready to go. When you see him you’ll understand why … Oh, hi Fred. What’s the load today?”
Fred leaned his bulk against the little counter between them and smiled. Cheryl worked the third shift and Fred often timed his deliveries to chat with the petite younger girl, younger meaning probably in her early thirties. He liked her easy smile. “The usual hundred and twenty. The scale weights and totals are signed like we need.”
Cheryl scanned the dock sheet. She made circles and initialed it in several places. She stamped each of the three sheets with a blocky date-wheel stamp. She pulled off two sheets and filed them in a folder marked with today’s date and already overflowing.
“Looks like it’s been a busy day the way the stuffing is nearly falling out of that folder.”
“Oh, yes. It’s been busy. The stores are calling for more product anticipating the Labor Day grilling rush and the store promotions they are sending to their printers. Their purchasing agents are in a tizzy.” She held her hand out over the slot.
“– Sorry,” Fred dug in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. The chrome chain connecting the wallet to his belt zippered across the sharp edge of the counter. He dropped his wallet open and slid out the sl
aughterhouse debit card. He dropped it through the slot to Cheryl.
She flipped the card around and swiped it through the debit machine quickly keying in her codes on the keypad and giving the card back to Fred.
“It’s heavier already.”
Cheryl smiled, “Don’t spend it all in one place –”
The exterior door flung open. It hammered against the rubber pucks mounted on the wall to catch it. An athletic trucker the size of a center guard filled the doorway. He breathed heavy with adrenaline. His eyes darted back and forth. His broad beam of a chest and bull-like arm pushed at the door. Powerful sausage fingers seemed to dent the already abused metal. A black leather biker’s jacket wrapped him tightly. Chains and zippers and buckles dangled around the jacket and clanked with each contact of his knobby black boots on the blistered and discolored tiles covering the hallway beams.
Fred gulped involuntarily and faded from the counter.
The leather jacketed trucker leaned toward the glass.
“Joan, he’s here –” Cheryl yelled back through the office, “You need to bring the documents out NOW!”
Joan walked briskly from somewhere behind in the office. Fred saw her jaw jutting angrily forward at Cheryl’s apparent meanness. Then Joan saw the enormous leather jacket darkening the light through the payment glass. She saw the trucker’s feral hungry eyes latch onto her movement. He licked his lips and ground his teeth together. The muscles on his jaw clenched and bulged from the sides of his face. A mix of pain, hunger, and violence crackled from his eyes hooded under black brush-like brows.
Joan’s body slackened and her face paled from fear, “H-h-here it is.” Joan tossed the papers on the desk and scurried away. Cheryl snatched the papers from Joan and went about banging the date stamp on the dozen papers like killing cockroaches. Some pages received two or three marks when one seemed sufficient while other exuberant marks painted the desk outside the paper's margin.
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #1 & #2) Page 18