by Rob Cornell
Green had said vamps, but why would a vampire waste so much fresh blood. She should have been sucked dry. Unless Green had been mistaken.
As if in answer to my doubts, one of the windows of the gas station exploded outward, and a man in a plaid shirt sailed out among shards of glass and a rain of snack cakes off a display he had bounced over on his way. A second later, a wrinkly, gray-faced vamp with glowing red eyes peered out of the hole. Blood ringed his mouth as if he’d gone bobbing in cherry sauce.
The vampire watched the man he’d tossed through the window struggle to get up with the kind of glee you expect from a kid with too many Christmas presents to count. Even the hungriest of vamps didn’t look quite so…ecstatic.
Another vampire joined him. Together, as if watching a damn nature show on the Discovery Channel, they stared out at the poor guy writhing in a scatter of broken glass and Twinkies.
Even from across the street I could see the man’s scalp had split. A large flap of skin and hair hung loose like a tattered wig. The bloody patch of his revealed skull gleamed in the fluorescent lights mounted to the overhang above the pumps. He kept getting to his hands and knees, then dropping back onto his side.
I gritted my teeth and started for the door. I’d go over there and—
“Don’t.”
I turned toward Sly’s voice. His face had lost all hint of color. His gray stubble dirtied his cheeks just enough to give him a corpse-like pallor. His eyes were a bloodshot as Green’s.
“Why not?” I asked. “I can’t let those fuckers—”
“Because there’s more of them,” he shouted over me.
A cold worm turned in my stomach.
“A lot more,” Green added.
I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the two vamps crawl through the hole in the window. They walked lockstep to the man on the ground and started stomping on him wildly, as if trying to put out a fire. It took only a couple of blows to crush the guy’s head. They clomped his brains to mash, but kept on going.
I eased a breath through my urge to vomit. “What the hell is going on?”
Movement in the shadows on the far side of the station caught my attention. Two more vampires came out of the dark. They went to the pumps, one to the truck, the other to the compact car. I stood frozen, unable to believe the outright bizarre behavior of these vampires, and stared while they grabbed the hoses from the pumps and began dowsing both vehicles with gasoline.
Four vampires. Contrary to Green’s assessment, that wasn’t a lot more. Certainly a number I could handle if I got the drop on them—though I’d have to forfeit using fire magic around all that gasoline. That would make it tougher, but not impossible.
If I didn’t do something, those vamps would turn the gas station into a bomb, putting everyone in the surrounding area in danger.
For a second, I couldn’t help visualizing the orange glow in the sky made by my burning home. I shoved the thought aside when I noticed the heat coalescing around my clenched fists. My anger and my power had recently bonded in a way beyond the normal connection between emotion and magic. That new fusion had saved my life. But if I didn’t reel it in, I could see it just as easily killing me.
I had started walking without realizing it until I stood halfway across the shop’s threshold with my elbow pushing the door aside.
“Sebastian,” Sly shouted, his voice reedy and tense.
I paused, but didn’t turn.
The night air reeked of gas as the vampires continued hosing the vehicles down. The one spraying the compact car had come around to the driver’s side and stuck the nozzle into the hole in the woman’s throat. A few seconds after he started, gasoline gushed out of her mouth. She didn’t twitch or thrash, mercifully already dead. That didn’t make the act any less disgusting.
With my attention locked on the horrors across the street, I didn’t see the shadow moving to my right until too late.
Something struck my side hard enough to send me through the glass door I still held open. Hard enough to brake the door’s metal frame off its hinges. Hard enough to send me ten feet before finally hitting the sidewalk and rolling off the curb into the street.
A car blared its horn as it swerved around me, so close I could feel the heat of its passing exhaust pipe, and got a mouthful of dirty fumes in the process.
Dazed, I could only lay there a second, staring at a line of black tar filling a crack in the pavement.
A pair of big hands grabbed the lapel of my leather coat and hoisted me up until my feet dangled a foot off the ground. I found myself staring into the red eyes of a vampire with a pair of kegs for a chest and a shovel of a face, features flat and dumb. Even his fang-filled mouth looked painted on. He wore a biker jacket way too small for his beastly size. And his breath smelled like a flooded tomb.
He cocked his head to one side as he examined my face.
I had a mixed reputation among vampires because I had vampire blood laced with mine. Only the use of some obscure magic kept me from turning into one of the undead. They referred to me as the Unturned, which, to me, sounded like the kind of thing you’d find in the back of a refrigerator.
“You,” he said.
“Yep,” I said. “Me.”
He sucked deep through his nose. Tilted his head to the other side. “Vampire?”
This big fella had quite the verbal dexterity. Alas, I couldn’t decode his one-word question. Was he asking if I was a vampire? Was he really that stupid?
Who cares? Roast him.
I clapped my hands on either side of his cinderblock head and tapped my magical energy. My hands grew warm.
The undisputed monster truck of vampires widened his eyes, a bright instant of understanding in an otherwise dim head.
I smiled, then tried a new trick I’d learned thanks to my desperate tangle with the recently dusted vampire Elder, Logan Goulet. I took the anger I still had simmering from what I’d witnessed across the street and fed it to my fire.
The flames that ignited around my hands glowed in brilliant blue and burned twice as hot (or more; hadn’t really tested it yet) as my standard fire. The vampire’s oversized noggin melted almost instantly. He had time to expel a hoarse gasp, then all he had left was a thick neck flaming like a torch.
A second later, his entire body crumbled to dust.
I dropped from his suddenly missing grasp and landed wrong, twisting my right ankle. Pain pierced the ankle like a large iron nail. I fell to my knees in front of the sizable pile of vamp dust. If I hadn’t seen for myself where the dust had come from, I would have assumed it belonged to at least two vamps.
The smell of gasoline had grown more pungent during my intimate encounter with Vampzilla. I glanced across the street.
The vamps at the pumps had tossed aside the nozzles and now stood at the curb, staring at me. The ones beating the guy in plaid into paste had joined the other two at the curb. They stood in a line, red eyes flaring, fists at their sides, like a clutch of gangbangers glaring at a rival who had wandered onto the wrong turf.
But this wasn’t their damn turf.
Despite the pain in my ankle, I stood and stared right back at them. If they wanted to cross the street and take me on over here, I’d have all four of them lit up and on their way to ashes before they made it past the yellow line.
They didn’t move.
I didn’t move.
We should have had ponchos and holstered six-shooters, like a sheriff and bandits facing off at high noon. Only high noon wasn’t a good time for these desperados.
Then I noticed one of them look quickly toward my left.
I spun in the direction of his glance and saw four (no) five (no) six more vampires trudging my way.
“Oh, shit.”
I backpedaled, my hurt ankle nearly folding under me. I managed to stagger sideways against the front of Sly’s shop and brace myself against the window.
When they started running, I turned and limp-hopped my ass toward the entrance,
glass from the door crunching under my boots.
Sly stood right inside. He grabbed me by the coat and wrenched me through the wrecked doorway. I thought for sure I was going to face plant, but he pushed up against me to provide support.
“You dumb asshole,” he growled as he tugged me along toward the back room. I could see Green already inside.
Right before we reached the room, I heard a whoosh followed by a boom so loud it sounded like we were inside a thundercloud. The floor vibrated, as did the glass cases displaying all the bongs and pipes. An especially fat bong rattled off its shelf and shattered through the one below it.
A plume of hot air carrying the smell of gasoline blew in from outside.
While Sly shoved me into the back room, I glanced back and saw the roaring pillar of fire where the gas station used to be. Burning chunks of debris sailed through the air and came crashing down, some pieces landing on nearby buildings and setting the roofs alight.
The four vampires who had been standing at the curb were now crossing the street with a casual gait, black silhouettes against the raging orange light behind them. They probably thought they looked real badass.
The half dozen others who had started running at me reached the shop’s entrance well before their pyromaniac friends.
Sly bumped me further inside the back room then slammed the heavy metal door behind him. He turned the deadbolt and slapped into place three additional bolts mounted to the door. Then he dashed backward as if the door had suddenly gone hot.
On the other side, something slammed hard enough to rattle the mounted bolts like discordant bells.
The impact was followed by the familiar metallic crow of a vampire’s scream.
“That’s right, motherfuckers,” Sly shouted at the door. “That shit is blessed!”
A sudden quiet fell.
Between the three of us, our ragged breathing sounded like bad static.
“Maybe they went away,” Green said.
A moment later, the noise of smashing glass, and the thud of tossed heavy things seeped through the door.
The bastards were trashing Sly’s store.
Chapter Eight
“You dumb asshole.”
Sly glared at me as if I’d kicked him in the nuts.
“You already said that.”
He pointed toward the door. “I had all that glass blessed and hexed. And you opened the damn door and let them all in.” A vein on his temple throbbed. Some of his gray hair had come loose from his stubby pony tail and hung across his face like a scythe. He normally kept his stonewashed jeans pegged at the ankles. One of them had come undone, and the cuff was clearly too short, showing off a pristine white gym sock that matched his white-as-new high top tennis shoes.
The clang and crash of destruction continued out in the shop. When the vamps got done, I doubted a single thing would remain recognizable. Hell, they might turn everything to a fine dust if they kept at it like they were.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know what was going on.” I scrunched up my face. “What the hell is going on?”
Green offered an answer. “Vamps have gone crazy. They’re just…” He ran a hand down his mouth. Adrenaline seemed to have cleared some of the red out of his eyes. He looked more scared than stoned now. “Crazy.”
“They’re rioting,” Sly added.
Something Goulet had said to me before he died came back to me.
If you let me die, you will set off the largest supernatural war this city has ever seen.
Was this the beginning of that war? As Detroit’s vampire Elder, he had organized a group of vampires to help in whatever scheme he’d been part off. His death may have created a vacuum in their power structure. Could that alone really set the city’s vamps to rioting like this, out in the open, fearless, reckless?
I shuddered.
We weren’t even in the city proper. Hazel Park was one of several surrounding suburban cities in the Metro Detroit area. If the vamps had begun meting out such destruction here, I couldn’t imagine what it might look like in Detroit’s heart.
“How many do you think are out there?” I asked.
Sly chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, gaze distant, as if counting in his head. Then he shrugged. “No clue, brother. They got rolling right after dusk. Seemed to come out of every shadow. I’m sure we saw a couple dozen running around out there.”
“Maybe more,” Green blurted, as if he had to force himself to speak.
“Maybe,” Sly agreed.
I wandered over to the large workbench in the center of the room. Sly’s alchemical collection of unmarked vials and glass bottles filled with fluids in all manner of shades seemed larger than before, and not nearly as organized as usual. Some of the bottles he kept on a wire spice rack lay scattered across the table. A shoebox full of oddly shaped leaves lay tipped on its side. Many of the leaves had tumbled out, some of them crunched into dark green flakes.
I looked around and noticed several of the larger boxes that typically lined the room like cardboard bricks pulled out and left open. The place looked as if in the midst of a hasty unpacking. I’d never seen it like this in all the years I’d visited. And those years stretched clear back to my childhood.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Preparing.”
“For what?”
“For the worst.”
Green made a thin whine from the back of his throat. He kept rubbing his fingers together as if he didn’t know what to do with them. I had a feeling the quirk meant he desperately wanted a joint.
I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t do drugs, but a double shot of Jack didn’t sound too bad.
A thump and metallic rattle sent a charge through my every nerve. I shot a look in the direction of the sound. It had come from the back exit. Sly had put in place a metal brace of some kind that wedged between the door and the floor, like a diagonal girder. He must have had that door blessed as well, because more razorblade screeches soon followed the impact.
“Are we safe in here?” I asked. “Can the room hold?”
“Probably.”
Green started pacing while still flicking his index and middle finger of one hand against each other. The nervous tick made a sandpapery sound that would start to grate if he didn’t quit it soon.
I tried to ignore him and focus on Sly. “So we wait them out until dawn.” I glanced from the back exit to the door that led to the shop. “And if they get through before then?”
Sly went to his bench and gathered three matching vials about as long and narrow as my pinky, each filled with clear blue liquid and stoppered with rubber corks. He handed one to me. He stepped in front of Green, forcing the big guy to stop pacing. Green took the second vial from Sly with a spacey curiosity. Then Sly held up his as if in toast.
“A quick death.”
Chapter Nine
The vial of blue stuff Sly had given me felt cool to the touch, but when I put it in my pocket I swore it burned like a hot coal. My imagination, of course. I had never carried death in my pocket before.
Two hours had passed. Green was kicked back in the recliner Mom used to sit in while Sly tried treatment after treatment to bring back her memories. Despite Green’s palpable anxiety, he had fallen asleep within thirty minutes of our forced confinement. He snored, but nothing obscene. Just a soft little gurgle that kind of sounded like he had swallowed a purring kitten.
Sly and I sat on a pair of stools at his workbench. He spent most of his time fiddling with this tincture or that mix of herbs and powders. I had no idea what he was making, if anything. I think he needed to keep his hands busy.
I spent twenty minutes of those first couple hours talking to Mom. I had called her as soon as my mind had accepted the absurdity of our situation and calmed a bit. Thankfully, she hadn’t seen any sign of the riots around the hotel.
She was watching news of the riots on TV and filled me in.
The mortal coverage was all over th
e place. They tried to explain away the inexplicable, conjured theories about what had set off the riots, and had lost contact with a number of news crews dumb enough to try and get coverage “on the ground.” The vampires had probably eaten them.
As I had suspected, Detroit itself suffered the brunt of the vampiric chaos. Burning buildings. Smashed shops and homes. Corpses scattered among the debris, the vampire equivalent of tossing aside hamburger wrappers and French fry cartons, the litter of a quick meal.
Police in riot gear had been dispatched. Reporting on their progress was spotty, but I doubted they had made much progress. There was talk of calling in the National Guard.
But eventually the Ministry would have to get involved, if they hadn’t already. They would deploy the Guardians, a magical SWAT force with serious juice. They could probably bring things under control. The hard part would come in the light of day, when the Ministry had to somehow cover up the paranormal aspects of this riot. Something like this might even warrant bringing in the global tier of the Ministry.
You will set off the largest supernatural war this city has ever seen.
After getting the lowdown, I told Mom to stay safe then hung up and filled Sly in on what I’d learned.
He set down the ceramic bowl of goop he’d been stirring (which smelled like a hog with bad gas) and dragged his hands down over his face. “Holy fucking hell.”
Since that pretty much summed up both of our sentiments on the subject, we fell silent.
Sly picked up his bowl, sighed, then set it down again and shoved it aside.
The long wait gave me plenty of time to heal up my twisted ankle. It wasn’t even a full on sprain, so it didn’t take much.
At some point, the vamps tossing Sly’s shop had apparently taken off. Only the vaguest noise of death and destruction reached us in the well-insulated room. It made the quiet feel oppressive, unbearable.
I started tapping out drum beats on the workbench to a selection of classic rock songs I could play in my head from first note to last.
Sly threw me a look that promised one of his potions in my face if I didn’t quit.