Circus of the Damned abvh-3

by Laurell Hamilton

  I went wide around them, holding the crosses out in front like every old movie you’ve ever seen. Except I’d never seen a vampire hunter with a charm bracelet.

  Larry was on his hands and knees, swaying ever so slightly. His voice was high, nearly hysterical. He just kept repeating, “I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding.”

  I touched his arm, and he jumped like I’d bit him. His eyes flashed white.

  Blood was welling down his neck, black in the moonlight. She’d bit him, Jesus help us, she’d bit him.

  The pale female was still fighting to get to Larry. “Can’t you smell the blood?” It was a plea.

  “Control yourself, or I’ll do it for you.” Alejandro’s voice was a low scream. The anger in his voice cut and sliced. The pale woman went very still.

  “I’m all right now.” Her voice held fear. I’d never heard one vampire be scared to… death of another. Let them fight it out. I had better things to do. Like figuring out how to get us past the remaining vampires and into the car.

  Alejandro had the female shoved against the car with one hand. My gun was in his left hand. I unsnapped the anklet with its matching crosses. You can’t sneak up on a vampire. Even the new dead are jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Since I had no chance of sneaking up on him, I tried the direct approach.

  “She bit him, you son of a bitch. She bit him!” I pulled the back of his shirt as if to get his attention. I dropped the crosses down his back.

  He screamed.

  I brushed the bracelet crosses across his hand. He dropped the gun. I caught it. A tongue of blue flame licked up his back. He clawed and scrambled, but he couldn’t reach the crosses. Burn, baby, burn.

  He whirled, shrieking. His open hand caught me on the side of the head. I was airborne. I slammed back-first into the road. I tried to take as much of the impact as I could with my arms, but my head rocked back, slamming into the road.

  The world swam with black spots. When my vision cleared, I was staring up into a pale face; long, yellow-white hair the color of corn silk traced over my cheek as the vampire knelt to feed.

  I still had the Browning in my right hand. I pulled the trigger. Her body jerked backwards like someone had shoved her. She fell back onto the road, blood pouring out of a hole in her stomach that was nothing compared to the wound in her back. I hoped I’d shattered her spine.

  I staggered to my feet.

  The male vampire, Alejandro, tore off his shirt. The crosses fell to the road in a little pool of molten blue fire. His back was burned black, with blisters here and there to add color. He whirled on me, and I shot him once in the chest. The shot was rushed, and he didn’t go down.

  Larry grabbed the vampire’s ankle. Still Alejandro kept coming, dragging Larry across the blacktop like a child. He grabbed Larry’s arm, jerking him to his feet. Larry threw a chain over the vampire’s head. The heavy silver cross burst into flame. Alejandro screamed.

  I yelled, “Get in the car, now!”

  Larry slid into the driver’s seat and kept sliding until he was in the passenger seat. He slammed the passenger side door shut and locked it, for what good it would do. The vampire tore the chain and threw the cross end over end into the roadside trees. The cross winked out of sight like a falling star.

  I slid into the car, slamming the door and locking it. I clicked the safety on the Browning and shoved it between my legs.

  The vampire, Alejandro, was huddled around his pain, too hurt to give chase right that second. Goodie.

  I shoved the car in gear and gunned it. The car fishtailed. I slowed to the speed of light, and the car straightened out on the road. We poured down the dark tunnel in a circle of flickering light and tree shadows. And down at the end of our tunnel was a figure in white with long, brown hair spilling in the wind. It was the vampire that had jumped Larry. She was just standing there in the middle of the road. Just standing there. We were about to find out if vampires played chicken. I was about to take my own advice. I put the gas pedal to the floorboards. The car lurched forward. The vampire just stood there while we barreled down at her.

  At the last second I realized she wasn’t going to move, and I didn’t have time to. We were about to test my theory about cars and vampiric flesh. Where’s a silver car when you need one?

  Chapter 22

  The headlights flashed on the vampire like a spotlight. I had an image of pale face, brown hair, fangs stretched wide. We hit her going sixty. The car shuddered. She rolled in painful slow motion up over the hood, and yet it was happening too fast for me to do anything. She hit the windshield with a sharp, crackling sound. Metal screamed.

  The windshield crumbled into a mass of spiderweb cracks. I was suddenly trying to see through the wrong end of a smashed prism. The safety glass had done its job. It hadn’t shattered and cut us to ribbons. It had just cracked all to hell, and I couldn’t see to drive. I stamped down on the brakes. An arm shot through the glass, raining glittering shards down on Larry.

  He screamed. The hand closed on his shirt, pulling him into the broken teeth of the windshield.

  I turned the wheel to the left as hard as I could. The car spun out and all I could do was let off the gas, not touch the brake, and ride.

  Larry had a death grip on the door arm and the headrest. He was screaming, fighting not to be pulled through the jagged glass. I said a quick prayer and let go of the wheel. The car spun helplessly. I shoved a cross against the hand. It smoked and bubbled. The hand let go of Larry and vanished through the hole in the crumbled glass.

  I grabbed at the steering wheel, but it was too little too late. The car careened off the road into the ditch. Metal screamed as something under the car broke, something large. I was slammed into the driver’s side door. Larry was suddenly on top of me; then we were both tumbling to the other side. Then it was over. The silence was startling. It was as if I’d gone deaf. There was a great roaring whiteness in my ears.

  Someone said, “Thank God,” and it was me.

  The passenger side door peeled open like the shell of a nut. I scrambled back away from the opening. Larry was left stranded and staring. He was jerked out of the car. I slid into the front floorboard, aiming where Larry had vanished.

  I was staring up at Larry’s body with a dark hand clamped so tight on his throat, I didn’t know if he could breathe. I stared down the barrel of my gun at the dark face of the vampire, Alejandro. His face was unreadable as he said, “I will tear his throat out.”

  “I’ll blow your head off,” I said. A hand came fishing through the broken windshield. “Back off or you lose that pretty face.”

  “He will die first,” the vampire said. But the hand vanished back through the hole. There was the sound of some other language in the vampire’s English. Emotion gave him an accent.

  Larry’s eyes were too wide, showing too much white. He was breathing. shallow and too fast. He’d hyperventilate, if he lived that long.

  “Decide,” the vampire said. His voice was flat, empty of everything. Larry’s terror-filled eyes were eloquent enough for both of them.

  I hit the safety on the gun and handed it butt-first to his outstretched hand. It was a mistake, I knew that, but I also knew I couldn’t sit here and watch Larry’s throat be ripped out. There are some things that are more important than physical survival. You gotta be able to look at yourself in the mirror. I gave up my gun for the same reason I’d stopped for the child. There was no choice. I was one of the good guys. Good guys were self-sacrificing. It was a rule somewhere.

  Chapter 23

  Larry’s face was a bloody mask. No single cut seemed to be serious, but nothing bleeds like a shallow scalp wound. Safety glass was not designed to be vampire-proof. Maybe I could write in and suggest it.

  Blood trickled over Alejandro’s hand, still gripping Larry’s throat. The vampire had stuffed my gun in the back of his pants. He handled the gun like he knew how to use one. Pity. Some vampires were technophobes. It gave you an ed
ge, sometimes.

  Larry’s blood flowed over the vampire’s hand. Sticky and warm like barely solid Jell-O. The vampire didn’t react to the blood. Iron self-control. I stared into his nearly black eyes and felt the pull of centuries like monstrous wings unfolding in his eyes. The world swam. The inside of my head was sinking, expanding. I reached out to touch something, anything to keep from falling. A hand gripped mine. The skin was cool and smooth. I jerked back, falling against the car.

  “Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me!”

  The vampire stood uncertainly, Larry’s throat gripped in one blood-streaked hand, holding his other hand out towards me. It was a very human gesture. Larry’s eyes were bugging out.

  “You’re choking him,” I said.

  “Sorry,” the vampire said. He released him.

  Larry fell to his knees, gasping. His first breath was a hissing scream for air.

  I wanted to ask Larry how he was, but I didn’t. My job was to get us out of here alive, if possible. Besides, I had an idea how Larry felt. Hurt. No need to ask stupid questions.

  Well, maybe one stupid question. “What do you want?” I asked.

  Alejandro looked at me, and I fought the urge to look at his face while I talked to him. It was hard. I ended up staring at the hole my bullet had made in the side of his chest. It was a very small hole, and had already stopped bleeding. Was he healing that fast? Shit. I stared at the wound as hard as I could. To fight the urge for eye contact. It’s hard to be tough when you’re staring at someone’s chest. But I’d had years of practice before Jean-Claude decided to share his “gift” with me. Practice makes… well, you know.

  The vampire hadn’t answered me, so I asked again, voice steady and low. I didn’t sound like someone who was afraid. Bully for me. “What do you want?”

  I felt the vampire look at me, almost as if he’d run a finger down my body. I shivered and couldn’t stop. Larry crawled to me, head hanging, dripping blood as he moved.

  I knelt beside him. And before I could stop myself, the stupid question popped out. “Are you all right?”

  His eyes raised to me through a mask of blood. He finally said, “Nothing a few stitches wouldn’t cure.” He was trying to make a joke. I wanted to hug him and promise the worst was over. Never make promises you can’t keep.

  The vampire didn’t exactly move, but something brought my attention back to him. He stood knee-deep in autumn weeds. My eyes were on a level with his belt buckle, which made him about my height. Short for a man. A white, Anglo-Saxon, twentieth-century man. The belt buckle glinted gold and was carved into a blocky, stylized human figure. The carving, like the vampire’s face, was straight out of an Aztec calendar.

  The urge to look upward and meet his eyes crawled over my skin. My chin had actually risen an inch or so before I realized what I was doing. Shit. The vamp was messing with my mind, and I couldn’t feel it. Even now, knowing he had to be doing something to me, I couldn’t sense it. I was blind and deaf just like every other tourist.

  Well, maybe not every tourist. I hadn’t been munched on yet, which probably meant they wanted something more than just blood. I’d be dead otherwise, and so would Larry. Of course, I was still wearing blessed crosses. What could this creature do once I was stripped of crosses? I did not want to find out.

  We were alive. It meant they wanted something that we couldn’t give them dead. But what?

  “What in the hell do you want?”

  His hand came into view. He was offering his hand to help me stand. I stood without help, putting myself a little in front of Larry.

  “Tell me who your master is, girl, and I won’t hurt you.”

  “Who else will, then?” I asked.

  “Clever, but I swear you will leave here in safety if you give me the name.”

  “First of all, I don’t have a master. I’m not even sure I have an equal.” I fought the urge to glance at his face, see if he got the joke. Jean-Claude would have gotten it.

  “You stand before me, making jokes?” His voice sounded surprised, nearly outraged. Good, I think.

  “I don’t have a master,” I said. Master vampires can smell truth or lies.

  “If you truly believe that, you are deluding yourself. You bear two master signs. Give me the name and I will destroy him for you. I will free you of this… problem.”

  I hesitated. He was older than Jean-Claude. A lot older. He might be able to kill the Master of the City. Of course, that would leave this master vampire in control of the city. He and his three helpers. Four vampires, one less than were killing people, but I was willing to bet there was a fifth vamp around here somewhere. You couldn’t have that many rogue master vampires running around one medium-size city.

  Any master that was slaughtering civilians would be a bad thing to have in charge of all the vampires in the area. Just call it a feeling.

  I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  “You want free of him, do you not?”

  “Very much.”

  “Let me free you, Ms. Blake. Let me help you.”

  “Like you helped the man and woman you murdered?”

  “I did not murder them,” he said. His voice sounded very reasonable. His eyes were powerful enough to drown in but the voice wasn’t as good. There was no magic to the voice. Jean-Claude’s was better. Or Yasmeen’s, for that matter. Nice to know that not every talent came equally with time. Ancient wasn’t everything.

  “So you didn’t strike the fatal blow. So what? Your flunkies do your will, not their own.”

  “You’d be surprised how much free will we have.”

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Sounding so damn reasonable.”

  There was laughter in his voice. “You would rather I rant and rave?”

  Yes, actually, but I didn’t say it out loud. “I won’t give you the name. Now what?”

  There was a rush of wind at my back. I tried to turn, to face the wind. The woman in white rushed at me. Fangs straining, hands clawing, spattered with other people’s blood, the vampire smashed into me. We fell backwards into the weeds with her on top. She darted towards my neck like a snake. I shoved my left wrist into her face. One cross brushed her lips. A flash of light, the stench of burning flesh, and the vampire was gone, screaming into the darkness. I had never seen any vampire move that fast. Had it been mind-magic? Had she tricked me that badly even with a blessed cross? How many over-five-hundred-year-old vamps can you have in one pack? Two, I hoped. Any more than that and they’d have us outnumbered.

  I scrambled to my feet. The master vampire was on his hands and knees beside the remains of my car. Larry was nowhere in sight. A flutter of panic clawed at my chest; then I realized Larry had crawled underneath the car so the vampire couldn’t make him a hostage again. When all else fails, hide. It works for rabbits.

  The vampire’s blistered back was bent at a painful angle as he tried to pull Larry out from under the car. “I will pull this arm out of its socket, if you do not come here!”

  “You sound like you’ve got a kitten under the bed,” I said.

  Alejandro whirled around. He flinched, like it hurt. Great.

  I felt something move behind me. I didn’t argue with the sensation. Say it was nerves; I turned, crosses ready. Two vampires behind me. One was the pale-haired female. I guess the shot had missed her spine; pity. The other vampire could have been her male twin. They both hissed and cowered from the crosses. Nice to see someone was bothered.

  The master came at me from the back, but I heard him. Either the burn was making him clumsy, or the crosses were helping me. I stood halfway between the three vampires, crosses sort of pointed at both groups. The blonds peered over their arms, but the crosses had them well and truly scared. The master never hesitated. He came in a rushing burst of speed. I backpedaled, tried to keep the crosses between us, but he grabbed my left forearm. With the crosses dangling inches from his flesh, he held on.

  I pulled, g
etting as much distance from him as I could, then hit him in the solar plexus with everything I had. He made an “umph” sound, then flicked his hand at my face. I rocked back and tasted blood. He’d barely touched me, but he’d proven his point. If I wanted to exchange blows, he’d beat the crap out of me.

  I hit him in the throat. He gagged and looked surprised. Beaten to snot was still a hell of a lot better than being bitten. I’d rather be dead than have pointy teeth.

  His fist closed over my right fist, squeezing just enough to let me feel his strength. He was still trying to warn me off rather than hurt me. Bully for him.

  He raised both his arms, drawing me closer into his body. I didn’t want closer, but there didn’t seem to be a hell of a lot I could do about it. Unless, of course, vampires had testicles. The throat shot had hurt. I glanced at his face, almost close enough to kiss. I leaned into him, getting as much room as I could. He just kept drawing me closer. His own momentum helped.

  My knee hit him hard, and I ground it up and into him. It was not a glancing blow. He crumpled forward but didn’t let go of my hands. I wasn’t loose, but it was a start, and I’d answered an age-old question. Vampires did have balls.

  He jerked my hands behind my back, pinning me between his arms and his body. His body felt wooden, stiff, and unyielding as stone. It had been warm and soft and hurtable only a second before. What had happened?

  “Take the things off her wrist,” he said. He wasn’t talking to me.

  I tried to crane my head around to see what was coming up behind me. I couldn’t see anything. The two pale vampires were still huddled in the face of the naked crosses.

  Something touched my wrist. I jerked, but he held me still. “If you struggle, he will cut you.”

  I turned my head as far back as I could, and was staring into the round eyes of the boy vampire. He’d recovered his knife and was using it to poke at the bracelet.