“Get her off me!” BJ choked out, unable to put up a fight.
Stepping forward, Taylor aimed The Peacemaker at Helen’s tiny face. She stopped sucking and raised her head on her bloated neck, extending into the air. Barely swaying back and forth, she glared down at the sheriff through malevolent eyes, her words floating upon the wings of a cold dark whisper. “They’re coming for you.”
Despite the panic smothering the room, Taylor managed to find a calm voice. “God is great; to hell with the devil,” he said, squeezing the trigger and sending her flying. She hit the floor with a double thud that Huck felt in his feet and slid across the tiles, crumpling against the presents stacked beneath the tree. Slowly, like watching ice melt on a warm sunny day, her body shifted back into the little old lady who first walked into the diner to shake off the cold. Smoke rose from patches of her skin where Helen began turning to ash around the edges, reeking of sulfur. The Christmas tree burst into flames, splashing a worried light across their warped faces.
“Fuckin bitch bit me!” BJ pulled his hand from his shoulder and studied the glossy red coating his palm like fresh paint. Falling to his knees, he rested his forehead against the floor. “Oh shit, it hurts!”
“You okay, baby brother.” DeSean set his handgun on the floor and helped him into a chair. “Just take it easy and relax. You gonna be aight, ya hear?”
Huck turned to check on Johnny and Nina and his stomach sank. Earl stood right behind him with a solemn look placating his colorless face. Outside of the busted nose and a cavernous bullet hole in his left cheek, he looked like a doting grandfather once again and didn’t seem to mind the knife sticking out of his back. Gritting his teeth, Huck squeezed off three rounds, jolting the old man back a little with each hot slug.
Earl regained his footing as if he’d been hit by a flutter of snowballs, staring past Huck to his wife smoldering across the room. “My Helen,” he said softly, blinking a crimson teardrop into the bullet hole in his cheek that was already beginning to heal. “She was all I had left.”
Sheriff Taylor took aim with the long revolver, popping a tendon in his neck. “Time to join her in the next world, old-timer.”
Spreading his arms like wings, Earl tipped his head back and shut his eyes. Silence fell over the diner like a damp bedsheet, broken only by BJ’s faint sobbing across the room.
Taylor cocked the hammer back and tipped his chin down, peering at Earl from the shadow beneath the brim of his hat. “God is great; to hell with the devil.” The Colt’s flashy bang sent Earl flying into a square table, bringing the condiments and chairs crashing with him to the floor. The burning Christmas tree threw jittery shadows across his bloodstained face as he began to sizzle and smoke.
“Jesus Christ!” DeSean cried, pressing a hand against his brother’s wound.
With the Beretta instinctively trained on the simmering remains, Huck watched the sheriff quickly rummage through Earl’s pockets before they caught on fire. The old man’s body burned red around the edges, leaving a dark ash on the inside that smelled of death and decay. Shaking his head to clear it, Huck turned to the sheriff with a scowl. “God is great; to hell with the devil?” He threw a hand out. “What is going on here?”
Watching Earl burn through distant eyes, Taylor stuffed something in his pocket and slowly lowered the gun. “Johnny was right,” he said, looking up to meet Huck’s twisted gaze. “They’re vampires.”
Chapter Ten
The Emerald Triangle
“Oh my, God,” Nina murmured, covering her nose and yanking the knife out of Earl’s crumbly back. “This can’t be happening. Not in real life!”
“I knew it!” Deputy Andrews paced the diner, swinging the Uzi from Earl to Helen. “I knew something was going on around this Godforsaken place! This much bad luck is no coincidence.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Taylor pulled a box of bullets from his parka hanging by the front doors. “But don’t let it cloud your thoughts. If you want to survive, you have to stay focused. They’re not done with us yet. Remain calm and control your breathing.”
“Can we get some towels over here?” DeSean yelled, kneeling next to his injured brother. “He’s bleeding out!”
“Shit!” BJ bent over in the chair and squeezed his eyes shut against a bolt of pain. “It burns, man!”
“Stay here!” Nina told Johnny, rushing behind the counter.
Huck turned to the glass doors where the ghostly footprints were filling in with snow, like whoever – or whatever – had been standing there was now gone. His eyes snapped to the sheriff and thinned. “Why did my shots barely put a dent in him?”
Taylor held up a chrome bullet. “Silver,” he replied, jamming it into the chamber.
“Oh shit!” Andrews stopped pacing, jaw dangling in the air. “Where’d you get those? I looked all over online for them.”
“I make them myself.” He slipped another bullet in, avoiding their eyes. “Dip them in holy water and have them blessed by a priest.”
“A priest?” Flames flickered against the shock welling in DeSean’s glassy eyes. Snow melted on his beard and dripped to the floor with his brother’s blood. “W-Why you makin silver bullets, Bob?”
“What’s gonna to happen to me?” BJ asked through his teeth. “Am I gonna turn into one of them?”
Nina rushed out from behind the counter with some clean towels, a pitcher of water, and a worried look distorting her pretty face.
“I’ll explain everything later.” Snapping the chamber shut with the flick of a wrist, Taylor holstered the gun and went to the frosted front doors. “Right now, we’ve got bigger problems to worry about,” he said, slipping the box of ammo into his slacks and staring out into the night. “This isn’t over yet.” He turned his back to the glass and searched their frightened faces. “Deputy, grab that fire extinguisher against the wall and put out the fire.”
In a blur, DeSean rushed across the room and slammed Taylor up against a door, rattling a nearby picture of Bud holding up a northern pike. “Why didn’t you shoot that bitch before she bit into my brother? You held your shot!”
“The same reason you didn’t! Their true form turns you to stone. You saw it! You felt it!”
DeSean’s chest heaved. His lips moved but nothing coming out. “I want to know what we’re up against,” he panted, smoke seeping out between his teeth. “And I mean the trufe this time, Bob.”
Pursing his lips, Taylor threw him into a nearby table and chairs. BJ pushed Nina out of the way and tried to get up to help his brother but fell to his hands and knees instead.
“You put your hands on me again and I will lock you up!” Taylor straightened his gun belt. “I’m sorry about your daughter, DeSean, but I’m only going to let you push me so far. And trust me when I say, fighting amongst ourselves now is only going to get us all killed!” He stopped to lower his voice. “Now, everyone just take it easy and breathe.”
Untangling himself from the chair legs, DeSean crawled for the .38 he left lying on the floor.
“Bad idea, Mr. T.”
Stopping on his hands and knees, he looked up and stared down the short Uzi barrel. “Yeah, that’s right, Deputy Dawg. Go ahead and shoot an unarmed black man.” He spit to the floor. “Blame it on whatever the hell’s going on here.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Will you get over it, DeSean?” Taylor yelled, leaning an elbow on a cigarette machine and scanning the parking lot through sharp eyes. “They’re still out there,” he whispered. “I can feel them.”
BJ vomited a rancid stream and Nina jumped back in her tall boots, narrowly avoiding the spray. A gory rope of saliva stretched from his mouth to the floor and he followed, pitching forward and knocking a tooth out against the tiles.
“Beej!” DeSean scrambled over and scooped him up into his arms while Andrews recovered both .38s. “Hang in there, baby brother. I got you.”
Blinking up at him, BJ grew quiet, a wheezing sound co
ming from his lungs. “I can’t…move.”
DeSean sat him up to keep blood from pooling in his mouth. “Just stay calm; you gonna be alright.” Looking up, he searched Taylor’s face. “What’s happening to him?”
Taylor pulled the fire extinguisher from the wall with a hard yank. “Their bites are just as venomous as a king cobra,” he said, spraying the Christmas tree and fake presents with short bursts of powder, filling the diner with more smoke. “I’m sorry but there’s nothing we can do for him now.”
“Don’t you got some anti-venom or some shit in your truck?”
He set the extinguisher on a table. “There is no such thing – not yet anyway.”
“Can’t…breathe,” BJ gasped, round eyes pleading for help.
“BJ! Come on, bro!” DeSean shook him in his arms. “Breathe, brother, breathe!”
The wheezing stopped and tears fell from BJ’s panic-stricken eyes.
“I think he stopped breathing!” Nobody came forward to help so DeSean rested his head on the floor and bent over him, plugging BJ’s nose.
“No, don’t!” Taylor shot a hand out. “Don’t get his blood in your mouth!”
BJ’s eyes jerked to the sheriff and widened in the quiet that came next.
Slack jawed, DeSean looked up. “Why not?”
“Because you’ll die next.”
The hint of a grim realization settled in his eyes and Huck could see the future whisk through the big man’s mind – a bleak one unfit for living. One spent hiding at night and scavenging during the day. Looking down, DeSean creased his brow. BJ’s eyes were shut now, his chest as still as the rest of him.
“He’s gone,” Taylor told him. “I’m sorry, but you should get back.”
DeSean stared at his fallen brother through watery eyes, the pool of blood on the floor reaching his knees. Slowly rising, he backed away on shaky legs, wiping bloody hands on his Carhartt. “I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”
“You will.”
Slowly, he rotated his head to the sheriff. “He gonna come back, ain’t he? Back as one of them things.”
Taylor unsheathed the Colt and let it hang in his hand. “Yes.”
“When?”
“Any second now. Much like a snake or spider bite, the venom works fast.”
DeSean watched his brother for a sign of change, tears painting his cheeks and the past skipping through his mind like a rock across a frozen lake. “The Devil is coming,” he whispered, crossing himself.
“No,” Deputy Andrews said, racking the Uzi. “He’s already here.”
“Look at those marks!” Johnny pointed up. “That old guy crawled barefoot across the ceiling! Did you see that?”
Nina went closer for a better look, frosted breaths slipping past her curvy lips. “How is that even possible?”
“Whatever is going on here, one thing is clear: it’s going to take all of us to end it. I’m going home to my daughter and I need all of your help to get there.” Huck turned to DeSean with a snarl embedded in his face. “You got me, big man?”
Staring vacantly at BJ, tears raced into DeSean’s beard as he slowly shook his head back and forth in denial.
“DeSean!”
Unlocking a mournful breath, he looked over at Huck. “Yeah, I got you, white boy.”
“Thank you!” Huck studied the sheriff, the smell of burning plastic and hair mixing in the air. “Now, answer the man’s fucking question. What’re we up against here?”
Sighing, the sheriff swept a hand out over Helen’s remains – now a smoking pile of ash in the perfect shape of her twisted body. “It’s a human trafficking ring, but they don’t want humans for sex or forced labor.” He pushed the toe of a boot through Helen’s feet, making them crumble. “They want them for their blood.”
“I told you!” Johnny shook bangs from his eyes. “Haven’t any of you read 30 Days of Night?”
“Fuckin-A right I have,” the deputy answered, barely pushing a toe into Helen’s powdery side.
Keeping a close eye on BJ, Taylor tightened his grip on the Colt. “We have reason to believe these vampires abduct some individuals based upon client requests. Others are just random kidnappings to fill inventory.”
“Inventory?” Setting the pie knife on the counter, Nina threw her hair into a ponytail. “What clients are you talking about?”
“Other vampires. Wealthy ones,” he clarified. “They see us as a food source, like cattle and chickens. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Huck paced the diner with smoke stinging his eyes. He rubbed them, seeing Ambrose suck the blood from Johnny’s thumb, recalling the color rise up the portly man’s neck and into his cheeks. Pieces began clicking into place like his first novel that hit The New York Times bestsellers list – a zombie thriller that played hard to get before coming to him like a Thailand whore. Except this time, he wasn’t safely tucked behind a computer screen on a comfy sectional. This time he was living the story out one hour at a time.
He stopped pacing and looked up. “How’d they know I’d answer that ad for a ’69 Camaro?” He ran a hand through his short, brown hair. “The farmer drugged my beer after the sale, but how’d they get me to come to him in the first place?”
“Much like targeted advertising, they hack into your Google searches. They can listen through your Echo or smartphone, even when the devices are asleep. They can watch you through your webcams, even when you’re asleep. They use dating apps, market place apps, and book club sites to get close.”
Nina grasped at words and Huck could tell her date with Chuck was rattling around in her head. Chuck wasn’t a victim in her disappearance, he was in on it. “How?” she barely asked, grabbing the pie knife again.
“Client data is everywhere because people don’t know how to cover their cyber tracks. Hell, they give their phone numbers out like candy.”
“Hang on a second…” Huck pulled his jeans up higher. “They saw I was searching for convertible Camaros online and then what? Posted an ad for a ’69 Camaro in my area?”
“Not just a ’69 Camaro, but the best ’69 Camaro around.” Taylor’s bushy eyebrows rose into the shadow of his hat. “Am I right?”
Huck snorted in wonder. “Yes.”
“Look, for the most part, these aren’t the bloodthirsty monsters you see on TV. They’re cunning and clean, proficient in clandestine operations and, like a band of gypsies, always on the move. Shit, they probably flew that car in from out of state just get you on the hook.” He studied Huck while combing his mustache with a hand. “Somebody must’ve really wanted you.”
“Yeah, his biggest fan,” Nina said, gripping the pie knife.
“Want me for what though? My blood?”
“That or your charming personality.” Taylor kicked a boot through Helen’s head, spraying a plume of ash into the air. “They sent these two in to work on us from the inside. Everything is a ploy.” He glanced outside. “I bet there’s zero luggage in their car.”
DeSean swiped at his tearstained cheeks. “Who sent them?”
Taylor looked over at Johnny. “What’d you say the leader’s name was again?”
Stepping back, Johnny shrank into Huck’s coat. “Ambrose,” he breathed out in a cloud. “He had slicked back silver hair and a fancy three-piece suit.”
“How do you know they’re vampires?” Andrews asked, finally lowering the submachine gun. “I mean, come on, Bobby. How do you know all this stuff?”
The sheriff turned from BJ’s lifeless body to the snow falling like confetti outside, eyes turning distant and cold. “Three years ago, on a night just like tonight, Franklin and I were returning to the station after tending to the worst accident we’d ever seen. It was dumping like it is now and dark as hell. We came upon a car running without headlights, so I pulled them over before they killed someone.” Taylor dragged in an unwilling breath and set it free. “The driver claimed he’d forgotten his license at home so I asked him to step out of the vehicle. When he opened the door
and got out…one second he was there and the next he was gone.”
“Gone?” Nina crossed the room and stopped next to Huck.
Taylor turned from the window to face them, cheeks as void of color as the landscape behind him. “Then, he was on me, driving me to the ground and trying to bite into my neck.” Rubbing his neck, his eyes glazed over as he relived the nightmare in his head. “I pushed with everything I had but it wasn’t enough. He was small but strong and just before his teeth found my flesh, Franklin bashed him over the head with a baton. The guy fell to the side and hissed before charging us again. I fumbled my gun out and shot him twice in the chest.” Taylor’s eyes dialed Huck into focus. “It drove him back a few steps but he kept coming. I thought he was on PCP or wearing a vest.”
Johnny wrinkled his nose. “What’s PCP?”
“It’s a type of piping.”
He frowned at Nina. “That’s PVC.”
“Oh.”
“Franklin and I unloaded everything we had and it was just enough to knock him off his feet.” Taylor approached Earl’s ashes. “We handcuffed him and he broke free like they were made of plastic, so we jumped in the SUV and tried to take off.” The sheriff grunted. “The guy actually pushed us back a little so I floored it and ran his ass over until there was nothing left of his head. We found a cooler in the back of his car filled with IV blood bags. We also found a box of bloodstained spigot collars and bracelets.”
DeSean’s face soured in the pale light. “A box of what?”
“They prick the person wearing them and can be turned on and off like a water spigot. It’s an easy way for vamps to drink from someone without killing them.” Gesturing with his six-shooter, he sighed. “Like I said, they’re efficient and this is a big dollar business, not just in this country but around the world.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Bobby!”
Woefully, Taylor shook his head at Andrews. “Franklin and I didn’t tell anyone, Scott.”
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