Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires

by Adrian Phoenix

  “Fuck you, pal,” I shouted back. “You see, believe it or not, I haven’t done a damn thing to you. Your son got lured into an alleyway by a vampire stripper and, as weird as it sounds, she used a magic gun to kill him. I wound up playing the scapegoat. I think her boss wants me to kill you, but I’m still working on why.

  “As for the stripper who killed your son, not to mention your packmates out at Orchard Lake—she’s dead now. I had my girlfriend track her down and kill her. If you want, you can have her ashes. All I want is my daughter back and for you guys to back off.”

  “Liar!” William’s huge clawed hands shook with rage as he bared his fangs at me. “My son was pure. He would never consort with some vampire whore.”

  “Have you ever gotten a blow job from a woman who doesn’t have to breathe? Trust me, he’d consort.”

  “No more of your lies, vampire. I know what you want and we will never surrender our land to one of your kind. No matter how many dead you lay on our doorstep, we will not give in.”

  “Land? What do you think this is, the Louisiana fucking Purchase? Let’s try it this way. I don’t want to kill you. I didn’t even bring any silver with me. Hell, I didn’t even bring the magic gun with me.” Which, by the way, I was already regretting. “I just want to be left alone. If you can’t do that, then we have a problem and if we have a problem, I’m going to have to put you and your little wolf pack down.”

  “Those two children you hold in your hands are sinless, vampire. If you kill them, we shall not be sad, but shall rejoice. They will fly to their Heavenly Father and join him forever in paradise. We, unlike you, are living, breathing creatures of God. We worship in many ways, but we all worship, and he will send us more soldiers to fill our ranks and more pups to fill our hearts.” He looked meaningfully at his pack when he spoke, trying, I thought, more to convince them than to persuade me.

  I saw grim commitment in the eyes of the gathering pack, some of them wearing crosses, some clutching crucifixes, even a few wielding Stars of David. They didn’t like it, but most of them would do whatever he told them.

  “Kill it,” he shouted.

  I mouthed an obscenity as he struck. I wouldn’t have had time to break the children’s necks even if I’d been willing to do it. He was faster than anything I’d ever seen, faster than me, faster than Talbot. His huge white paws smacked my helmet with lightning speed and it shattered. The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” played through my mind. Now I had definitely beaten El Segundo.

  27

  ERIC:

  POWERHOUSE

  I’d been on fire before and it usually made me feel like an idiot. Often, when I ignited, it was a result of forgetting what time it was or watching an impending sunrise just a little too long. This time it made me angry. Claws tore at my clothes, and as each strip of fabric fell away, new pain erupted. But hey, at least I was warm.

  Part of me wondered if it wasn’t better this way, to die on Bald Mountain, in the sun on a breezy day in August. The other part of me told the suicidal part to shut the fuck up and fight.

  It only took a few seconds for the flames to completely engulf me. I wondered if I looked anything like the Human Torch or if it was more like one of those movie stuntmen. Several werewolves were laughing and the mama werewolf was fussing over her children. I was just as glad as she was that they were safe. Then I heard a single word that changed everything.

  “Daddy!” It was Greta. She could feel me burning, even through her own pain. People say that monsters only come out at night. Mine came out right then. Rage doesn’t even begin to cover it. Steel bands snapped inside my chest and chains pulled free of their wall mounts.

  Suddenly, I could see. The flames were out and everyone looked a little shorter. Tendrils of smoke rose off dark black skin that I didn’t recognize as mine. It didn’t look charred. It was smooth and sizzled softly in the sun. I tried to move, but couldn’t. My whole body had gone numb and useless, as if I’d been staked through the heart, but then it started moving of its own accord. I could see and hear, but something else was in the driver’s seat.

  The thing I had become held up its arm and high-pitched squealing filled the air, joined by the sound of a few thousand wings. Clouds of bats and birds swarmed overhead, blocking out the sun. My opponents looked on in silence as the sky turned black. My new skin stopped sizzling. William looked up at me and crossed himself. Several of the others presented their holy symbols and began to pray in Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, and English. The super vamp I had become roared and started toward them.

  No! Wait!I started yelling inside my head.Get Greta, jackass!

  There was no response from Ericzilla. It was more like watching the demo for a first-person shooter video game than actually being me. Two werewolves jumped at me in slow motion. Uber vamp speed was unbelievable. I darted forward, plucking both werewolves from the air and tearing them into quarters, not just killing them, but mangling them with a purpose. If this was what happened when I blacked out, then I wished I would black out again, because I really didn’t want to see this.

  Blood jetted in lazy streams from the werewolves’ remains as I struggled with all my might to regain control. If I could even just turn my head toward Greta…Instead, I was forced into the skies as the uber Eric darted down at another unlucky werewolf, pulling it up into the air and tearing off its head with talon-tipped fingers.

  There was no doubt that I could destroy the entire pack this way, but if I did that and then suddenly found myself back at the wheel, standing over the bodies, the living curtain of wings would probably disperse, and Greta and I would both be fried. My death would have been fast, and right now I almost welcomed it, but hers would be prolonged and torturous. I couldn’t abide that.

  Stop screwing with the werewolves and get Greta out of the box, you dumb fucker!I yelled at Ericzilla.She’s going to die in there if you blow this! If you can even pick up a single thought, you cave-brained bastard, then open the damn box!

  Another werewolf entered the shredding zone and went from living thing to flesh-chunk confetti with bright red liquid streamers. Either I had slowed or the pack was speeding up. They were doing their best to fight against me, and so was I. Then, the two little kids wolfed out and my uber vamp body turned on them. I tried with every bit of mental strength to stay the death that awaited those children;They’re just kids , I shouted mentally.We are here to get Greta, shit-for-brains! So get Greta and get us the fuck out of here!

  I pictured myself standing in front of the uber Eric, blocking the children and pointing at the box. My mental image head-butted the black-skinned beast and kicked it in the groin. When that didn’t work, I fought dirty. I showed him the night I’d first found Greta, lying bruised and bloody in her foster father’s bed. She’d been nine. The uber vamp howled.You remember that? I shouted.You want to be like that, like the human so evil I wouldn’t even bite him?

  Greta is in that damn metal box right over there and she needs me! Comprendez?I had my mental image walk over to the box and rip it open. Greta was inside and I imagined myself ripping open a vein and spraying blood like my arm was a fire hose to heal her wounds.

  Uber Eric paused and time returned to normal. Ten werewolves piled onto me, clawing and biting like mad to take my uber vamp body down. Had I gotten through? Did it, whatever was driving, understand? I began to suspect that it had, because it slowly turned, ignoring the wounds and the werewolves, looking for the box. Black blood flowed down one of my arms from a multitude of cuts and bites. I couldn’t feel it, but it looked painful.

  Uber me turned its head to look at the blood, swatting the werewolves away on autopilot, using both wings and the less-injured arm. Then, I got a look at the box with Greta inside and heard my own voice say, “Hold tight, sweetheart. We’re getting the hell out of Dodge!”

  I still wasn’t in control, but that certainly sounded like a step in the right direction. The uber vamp grabbed the box and leapt into the air.

  Gun
shots sounded from below and the twang of arrows filled the air. The arrows made me laugh on the inside, but Supervamp must not have thought it was funny. Real wooden arrows are much more useful than bullets against a vampire, and William’s werewolves knew it.

  I wanted to see how many werewolves were down there, but uber me wasn’t interested. A mass of bats poured out of the sky, diving toward the werewolves, and the uber vamp’s black skin began to sizzle again in the now imperfect screen created by the remaining bats above.

  I spotted Rachel in the loaner car. My uber vamp body made a beeline for the vehicle, landing a few feet from the front bumper. Rachel screamed, but she didn’t hit the gas.

  Crouching low over the box, shielding it with tenebrous wings as if afraid an arrow or stray beam of sunlight might strike Greta, the uber vamp and I punched through the seam of the metal box with one black talon. Metal screeched as the weld gave way, little curlicue strands falling to the grass as we peeled back the top. Tilting the box to the side, we let Greta roll out onto the ground. She looked pretty bad, like charred hamburger, but she was still with us.

  As soon as I saw my girl, the whole transformation happened in reverse. My nerve endings woke up. It would have been just fine with me if they had waited a while. I had multiple gunshot wounds, cuts, scratches, bites, and two or three arrows in me. One of the arrows was close enough to my heart that I was afraid to move too quickly lest it wiggle those last few centimeters and leave me paralyzed midrescue.

  “Rachel!” I shouted. “Get over here and pull these arrows out!”

  She stared at me motionlessly for a moment before springing into action. “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “Arrows. Out. Now!”

  Rachel grabbed the first arrow and jerked it out of my shoulder with a loud grunt. It came free, red blood mixing with the black blood already covering the shaft. She grabbed the next and pulled with all her might. I gritted my teeth against the pain as the shaft came free. Rather than pulling out the arrow in my left side, she thrust it the rest of the way through. My legs buckled and I fell to one knee. But when she grabbed the last arrow I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was too deep.

  “Leave it,” I said.

  “I’ve almost got it.” Rachel put her knee in my back for more leverage and I shouted as the arrow twisted in my chest.

  “Just leave the damn thing in and start the car!”

  More spots of sunlight appeared on the grass as she dove straight through the open window of the car and into the driver’s seat. Overhead and back near the camp, the mass of winged minions was beginning to disperse. A core group of gray bats struggled to maintain formation, but was losing the battle. As Rachel kicked open the passenger’s side door, dozens of werewolves, no longer blinded by the horde of bats, howled a battle cry and began loping toward us.

  I gashed my wrist open with my fangs and bled into Greta’s eyes. When they flickered open I pushed my thoughts into her head. “Turn into a mouse.”

  “Can’t, Dad,” she replied. “Too tired.”

  I latched hold of her thoughts, but they were hazy, jumbled, and confused. So were mine. I tried to block out the sound of the approaching werewolves and pushed harder, so hard she screamed. She managed the change, then went limp again.

  She was a sad, burnt-looking mouse. Talbot would have thought her an hors d’oeuvre gone wrong, but she was still my Greta and she was still undead, which was all that mattered to me. I jumped into the car, holding her carefully in my fist, and yowled as sunlight hit the exposed flesh on my back where claws, bullets, and arrows had torn through the leather. Rachel gunned the engine and started pulling away.

  As the first wolf cleared the hill I tucked Greta into Rachel’s purse, turned into a mouse, and jumped in after her. Rachel reached over, closed the purse flap, and drove hell-bent toward the park exit. Inside the bag, I cuddled against Greta and hoped William’s pack didn’t catch up with us.

  I had no idea how the whole uber vamp thing actually worked, but I knew it was tied to my anger. If I got angry enough to have a rage blackout, then I did my own little version of the Incredible Hulk or Super Dracula, whatever you wanted to call it. Freud would have said that it was pure id, unleashed and given form, not unlike Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but that was a little too easy an answer for me. No one was lining up to explain why I’d been aware this time either, why I’d heard and seen what happened, though I’d never remembered any of it before.

  Could it be that making Rachel my thrall had been responsible? If it allowed me to sense my offspring, and to supposedly recognize the thralls created by other vampires…who knew if it helped control the part of me that went berserk? Was it a good thing or a bad thing? I couldn’t decide.

  I’d been a vampire for over forty years, and all along I’d been turning into this thing right, left, and sideways, whenever people pissed me off. Why had nobody said anything? Talbot said he hadn’t told me because he thought I knew. I believed that. How do you not know you turn into a giant vampire blender and puree things when you’re mad? Maybe Marilyn had never seen it. No one ever had to tell me that I turned into a bat, a cat, or anything else. Why would they assume I didn’t know? But Roger knew me better than that.

  In fact, I’d bet Roger knew the most about it, and I couldn’t ask him about it. Not right now. What if we’d already had that discussion before, or after one of my blackouts, and I’d forgotten? What if I’d “figured it out” any number of times, but, unable to control it, had forgotten?

  What’s your father’s name?Marilyn’s question from earlier rose, a disturbing specter in my thoughts. I’d already forgotten what she’d said. The last name started with a C, I thought.

  Take it from me: If you’re going to die in a car crash and miraculously rise as one of the living dead, don’t let them embalm you. I was starting to think maybe it had screwed with my head. As I lay puzzling out the complexity of my life, the thrum of the motor and the exertion of the day lulled me gently to sleep.

  28

  TABITHA:

  PMS

  Void City was quiet and brooding that Monday night. Every traffic light glared bright red before allowing Talbot’s Jaguar to weave its way homeward. Halfway there, the two of us realized that it was Eric’s birthday, or at least, it would be after midnight, so we went shopping.

  Talbot bought him a new cell phone and I made do with a selection from Victoria’s Secret, Frederick’s of Hollywood, and Sahid’s Adult Books and Novelties. I spent too much money, but I felt guilty about sleeping with Talbot. Eric would have slept with a human and not called it cheating. Maybe he already had. I hoped he had. It would make me feel better about what I’d done.

  I stood up on all fours, turned in a circle, and sat back down on the seat fitfully. I liked being a cat, feeling warm, having a heartbeat, breathing autonomically, things that my human body no longer provided. Even as a cat, though, I was increasingly on edge. “Damn him, that man has me wrapped around his little finger!” I hissed.

  “I would hesitate to refute that,” Talbot said as he glanced down at me.

  “I have never cheated on him, not once! There is no telling how many times he’s screwed around on me, but I’m the one who feels guilty.”

  Streetlamps and skyscrapers passed by the windows and Talbot did not comment. “Well?” I meowed.

  “Well what?” he answered. Eyes on the road, he reached down and silenced the classical music on the radio. I hadn’t even noticed there had been music until he turned it off. “Eric never made any pretense at being faithful. You did. Maybe you took pride in it? It kept you in the right as the long-suffering faithful member of the relationship. Now you’re not the martyr anymore and it’s eating away at you.”

  Turning human, I crossed my arms and stared out the side window. “That is so totally screwed up! I don’t even know how you said it with a straight face.”

  “Oh, so now you’re mad at me?” he said with a grin.

  “I was vulnerable and
hungry, and I’m still new to this. You’re used to dealing with newborn vamps.” I kept my eyes focused on the window, staring out at the city. “You should have stopped me. I wasn’t in control of myself.”

  “Buckle your seat belt,” he ordered. Outside the window, a little boy in dirty jeans and a ratty T-shirt stood on the street corner. He smiled at someone across the street. I rolled down the window as we passed. Wind hit my face, tousling my hair. Craning my neck out of the window, I watched the woman the boy was smiling at cross the street. “What happened to your jeans?” she asked him.

  The rest was lost to me as we sped past. Remorse struck me by surprise and I blinked back tears. “I can never have kids.”

  “And this didn’t occur to you before you decided you wanted to be a vampire?”

  “It did. I thought I didn’t want kids, but now that I can’t have them…”

  “Buckle your seat belt if you’re going to be in human form,” he said patiently. “I don’t want to have to pay my way out of a ticket.”

  “What do you mean? Couldn’t you just flash your fangs or go all cat-eyed so they’d let you go?”

  “And then I’d have to pay for the ticket in cash later when one of Lord Phil’s cronies called me up to talk about the fang fee.”

  “Fang fee.”

  “Hey,” Talbot said more cheerfully. “Now that you know Lord Phil, maybe you can get him to fix my tickets.”

  “What are you even talking about?” Rushing in on the end of my thoughts about children, I thought about my last sunset. Shouldn’t I have looked at the sun one last time, to say good-bye?