He stepped around them and headed for the front door. Asil glanced at the incoming party and then turned around to face Kelly.
“Do you see the very young man in the tuxedo who just came in?”
Kelly frowned and squinted. “Yeah. That’s Bruce. He’s a cousin, I think, of Shawna’s—one of the other members of the group. I haven’t seen her tonight. He’s a freshman, I think, and he’s been coming to the LARPs since school started this fall. He’s not a good player, mostly he just sits around and watches us. I expect that he’ll find his own group of friends and quit coming. Why?”
Bruce wasn’t the name Asil knew him by. Though “Bruce” would recognize his own. For the first time, Asil wondered if he had stepped into a trap when he’d come on this date.
“LARP?” asked Asil.
“Sorry. It stands for Live Action Role-Playing. L-A-R-P. Do you know Bruce? What’s wrong?”
“Come with me,” said Asil. Leaving his enemy still standing bothered him, but he had to gather information.
Walking through the dancing crowd was like swimming upstream, but Asil was a good swimmer. People parted for them, as he led Kelly to an alcove furnished with a bench and a large plant that looked real but smelled of plastic.
“Forgive me,” Asil said, pulling Kelly close and burying his nose in the young man’s neck.
Kelly struggled, mostly from surprise, Asil thought, much good it did him. Faintly, very faintly, he caught the smell of vampire.
He pulled back and held on until he was sure Kelly had his balance. Kelly jerked free and straightened his clothes. In a fine temper he said, “What was that about? On a normal date, I would have objected because you didn’t ask. But that wasn’t about romance—and I have an almost uncontrollable urge to smack you on the nose. Were you smelling me?”
Asil reminded himself forcefully that Kelly had a right to be mad. He loosened his neck and heard the vertebrae pop. “Bruce is a vampire.”
“I could have told you that,” Kelly snapped. “That’s right, I did.” His mouth opened, doubtless to deliver some more scathing commentary—but he shut it. “No way. No way in hell. Vampires aren’t real.”
“Shh,” advised Asil. “They are real, I assure you. And they have very good hearing. What one is doing here, I cannot tell you. Is there any chance Bruce was involved in the prank that led to our date?”
Kelly stared at him, but when he spoke again it was in a hushed whisper. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. Trace and his girlfriend apparently thought it was a good idea one day while they were drunk.”
“They exchanged emails with people pretending to be me for two weeks,” Asil said dryly. “Were they drunk the whole time?”
“Them? Who knows, it’s possible,” Kelly shrugged distractedly. “What do you mean vampires are real? Everyone knows they aren’t real.”
“Vampires,” Asil spoke slowly, “are real. They usually live in seethes and feed on human prey, who die very slowly as they gradually turn into mindless slaves. You’ve been bitten—don’t fuss. Only once or you’d smell more like one of them. You’ll be safe enough.”
“How could I have been bitten?” Kelly asked, his eyes widening until the whites were visible all the way around like a startled horse. “I don’t think I’ve exchanged two words with Bruce and we haven’t gotten closer than ten feet apart. How could I have been bitten by a vampire and not known?”
“It is better for you that you didn’t know,” Asil told him. “It means that the vampire hasn’t decided to make you his, yet.” Probably the vampire was afraid to draw attention to himself.
Kelly started to say something more and Asil held up a hand. “Sorry, let me think a bit.”
It was possible that the vampire had arranged the whole thing to lure Asil out without the pack at his back, so that he would be vulnerable. It sounded plausible until Asil looked deeper.
Bruce who Asil had once known as … Basil something. Basil Hennington. Basil Billingsley. Basil Featherington. Something of the sort—whatever the vampire’s name had been, it had made Asil think of chicken soup. The vampire’s name might have changed, but this vampire was a creature of subtlety. He lived in the shadows, away from his own kind. Attacking one of Bran’s wolves would not be subtle in any fashion.
It was Asil’s people who had sought out Kelly for the date. And he was certain it was his pack—because no vampire could have imitated him so well in the emails. It took familiarity and Asil had never been familiar with any vampire.
And there was this. Alone Asil might be, but he was not vulnerable.
No. The vampire who called himself Bruce had no idea Asil was anywhere near. Bruce just thought he had a nice meal ticket going.
Kelly had folded his arms around himself and was obviously bursting with questions. But he’d kept quiet.
“It will be all right,” Asil said.
“Weirdest freaking date of my life,” muttered Kelly.
He was afraid. Asil’s wolf usually liked it when people were afraid, but this one was under his protection tonight. There was no need for the fear.
“We need to go outside and look for a dark space,” Asil told him.
“It’s eight p.m in the winter on the outskirts of Missoula,” Kelly said. “There’s freaking dark space everywhere.”
Asil frowned at him.
“Fine,” Kelly huffed. But he didn’t smell mad. He still smelled scared.
“Look at me,” commanded Asil.
Kelly looked at him.
“I will not let harm come to you.” Asil smiled and Kelly took a step back because it was that kind of smile. “In fact I will do you and your group of vampire players a good turn—and teach Trace not to meddle in other people’s lives at the same time.”
“Hey, Bruce?” Kelly said nervously.
Bruce turned to look at him, and no matter how hard Kelly tried to see it—Bruce looked like a freshman who hadn’t quite grown into his own skin.
“You heard about what Trace did to me, right?”
Bruce frowned. “I heard. I don’t know why he’s in charge of the group when he’s such a jerk.”
“Yeah, me either.” Maybe because no one else wanted to put the time in to do it right—and because Trace was a decent game master. “I have an idea that will keep him from ever doing it again—to anyone else. I don’t want him to see me watching—but you know my friend Meg?” Meg wasn’t formally a part of the vampire group but she did costuming for a lot of them.
“I do.” Bruce smiled and the avarice that came and went in his eyes made Kelly’s stomach tightened. Yeah, this wasn’t a good guy.
“She’s over with Trace and his girlfriend right now, distracting him so I can get you outside without him noticing.” No lies, Asil had told him. Vampires weren’t as adept as werewolves apparently were at telling when someone lied to them—but this one was very old and with age came some skills. Kelly hadn’t know that werewolves could tell when someone was lying.
Asil’s advice rang in his ears. You’re afraid—and that’s fine. Let him know there’s a reason to be afraid and he won’t pay any more attention to it.
“I’m not the first one he’s tormented,” Kelly said. “But I’m going to be the last.”
“What are you going to do?” asked the vampire.
“I’m going to teach him he can’t hurt people without paying a price,” Kelly told him. “He would never face me on his own if he could help it. Meg is going to get him to follow her outside, out of sight. Then you and she are going to watch to make sure no one else follows him out to interrupt, and to vouch that the fight was fair.”
“You’re going to beat him up?” asked Bruce. “Really?”
Kelly didn’t blame him for the doubt in his voice. Trace was bigger and Kelly had that whole geek thing going. “Really,” Kelly said. He was pretty sure he could take Trace if he wanted to. His mother had given him dancing lessons. His father had insisted that any boy who danced that much needed to be able to protect himself—so h
e had six years of Taekwondo to go with his dancing. He tried a smile and wasn’t upset that his inner tension made it fail. “I haven’t done anything like this ever. But I can’t let it go.”
“Shawna told me that the date went okay,” said Bruce. “I didn’t see him, but Shawna said he was handsome—and you guys did an awesome tango.”
There was something funny about Bruce. Kelly had seen it from the first—but he’d done his best to ignore it, figuring it for a light case of autism or just the awkwardness that went with being a teenager. But when Bruce smiled back at him, he recognized it for what it was for the first time. Bruce was pretending to be human, but, like a second-rate actor, he got it just a little wrong.
Kelly forced himself to stay engaged in the immediate task. In response to Bruce’s question, he nodded. “He’s a cool guy. He was upset at what Trace did to me, and very kindly agreed to play along. But it might not have been okay. I’m getting out of the group—grad school means I don’t have time. I guess that’s why I decided to do this. To teach Trace a lesson. There are kids like you in the group and you deserve to be safe from that kind of pointless harassment. You might call it my Christmas present to them. To you.”
“Why pick me?”
Kelly grimace. “That’s easy. Who else could I trust? The people who aren’t panting after Trace are panting after his girlfriend.”
Walking into the dark with a vampire at his back was the scariest thing he’d ever done in his life. The woods got dark pretty fast as they tramped through the snow. His breath steamed out of his mouth in the cold air. He was going to regret having left his jacket in Asil’s car before very long. He hiked about a quarter mile in the darkness until they came to a fence. Far enough, he thought, that the sounds of a fight wouldn’t travel.
“Here,” he said turning around.
“It is very dark,” said Bruce, who was just a shadow in the shadows.
“It’ll do.” Kelly hoped he sounded resolute.
“So while we are waiting for them,” Bruce said, his voice changing just a little, softening into an intimate tone. “I think I have something we might do to pass the time.”
He took two steps closer. Kelly’s back was against the fence and he had nowhere to retreat. Even if he could have, his feet felt oddly heavy and he swayed toward the vampire.
“We have done this once before,” said the vampire. “Shawna is dying—I need another servant. You’d like to be my servant, wouldn’t you? Just say, yes. It would be an early Christmas present for me.”
Kelly forgot to breathe as Bruce’s words threaded through him like a hook laced with happy-thoughts. He just knew that belonging to the vampire would be the best thing that ever happened to him, like winning the lottery.
“I like Christmas,” Bruce continued as Kelly took a tentative step forward. “So much misery for humankind as they scuttle around spending more money than they can afford on gifts no one wants or appreciates. Christmas is a time when no one feels that their life is good or worthwhile. Christmas is a fitting remembrance for a gift humans despised so much they hung it on a cross so it wouldn’t bother them anymore. I was a priest once. I know, who’d have thought, right?”
Bruce’s face was revealed for a moment when the clouds opened around the half-full moon and silvery light illuminated their private space. His eyes were focused on something other than Kelly and Kelly remembered, viscerally, the marks that Asil had found on Meg’s neck. The marks that had set Kelly on his task—one he was failing.
“No,” Kelly said, the word dragging out of his throat—but the word broke the vampire’s hold, and he could move again.
Snarling, Bruce whipped his hand out and wrapped it around Kelly’s wrist. Kelly’s response was instinctive, born of fear and six years of training. He twisted his arm until the narrow boney edge of his wrist was at the weakest point of the vampire’s grip and jerked it free.
He didn’t even pause—he ran, crashing blindly through the underbrush and the uneven, snow-covered footing that threatened to trip him at every night-blinded step. And behind him, keeping up easily, the vampire followed.
“Run, yes, run,” the vampire chanted to himself. “You ran the last time, too. I like it when my Christmas presents run.” He laughed, a weird half-hysterical laugh and then said, “Run, Kelly, run.”
Finally the inevitable happened and Kelly put a foot wrong, crashing to the ground in a tangle of snow, tree-root and bush. He rolled until he could get some leverage for his feet, then crab-walked frantically backward until the solid trunk of a tree hit his back.
The vampire stayed where he was, laughing quietly—not out of breath at all. The only way Kelly could tell it was Bruce was Bruce’s suit, because the creature who wore it had only an incidental resemblance to the human he had aped.
His eyes were either glowing or they caught the light of the moon differently than human eyes did—like the Siamese cat Kelly’s older sister had. Red and shiny, they held him in a hungry grip more sure than the vampire’s hand on his wrist had been. Flesh pulled away from the bones of Bruce’s face until no one looking at him would see anything but a monster. If any doubt about Bruce had lingered (and it had), the fangs both delicate and sharp that Bruce was displaying were an answer.
“Not that I didn’t enjoy that,” the vampire said, “but we need to take care of business before Meg and Trace show up, don’t we? Never fear, Kelly, I won’t let Trace bully me, though it was good of you to be concerned.”
“I wasn’t actually worried about you,” Kelly managed with more bravado than he felt. “I just needed you outside.”
The vampire stilled. “Why is that?”
Sometime while he was running, it had started to snow again and white flakes drifted to the vampire’s shoulders. The snow brought with it the deep feeling of silence that was so much more than just a lack of noise that Kelly had only ever felt on a winter’s night in the woods.
Kelly’s senses told him that they were alone in the silence. He heard nothing, sensed nothing that told him differently. He had only Asil’s word that he was not alone in the night with the vampire. Somewhat to his surprise, it was enough.
Kelly stood up slowly, keeping his back against the tree for support, because he wasn’t sure that his legs would hold him. There was a tear in the knee of his trousers—he’d have to have Meg sew him a new one.
“I do have a Christmas present for you,” he said with more cool than James freakin’ Bond.
The vampire jerked his head to the side as a great shadow emerged from the darkness tucked under a thicket of leafless aspen. Before Bruce could move closer, the werewolf was upon him.
“Merry Christmas,” said Kelly his voice lost in the roar of the attack.
He hadn’t actually seen Asil as a werewolf, apparently it wasn’t as fast as it was in the movies to change from wolf to human. He wished Asil would stand still or that the sun was out so he could get a better look. If he had to describe the werewolf right now, it would be “gold eyes and huge.” Fast and strong and graceful. And very, very huge. The vampire looked like a toy in his jaws—not that the vampire wasn’t fighting back.
He didn’t hear anything—the fight was unexpectedly loud—but his eyes were drawn away from the fight by some instinct. On the other side of the battling monsters, Meg stood with Trace. They were close enough to watch without becoming collateral damage—or so Kelly hoped.
Trace was a big guy, but Meg was three inches taller and a lot meaner. She had a hand on his neck as if she’d dragged him here. Not that Trace was fighting her hold, right at this moment. Like Meg, his attention was all on the battle in front of them.
Somehow, while Kelly had been distracted, the vampire had gotten out of Asil’s jaws. He landed a kick on the werewolf’s side that sent the wolf tumbling like a motorcycle wreck into the trees.
The vampire was a lot stronger than Bruce had looked. Kelly had the thought, as Bruce threw himself on the werewolf, that maybe Kelly hadn’t broken out of
his hold earlier. Maybe Bruce had let him go because he wanted the hunt.
They moved fast, the monsters who fought. It was like trying to follow the beating of a fly’s wing—and the night’s heavy shadows didn’t help. Kelly blinked his eyes to relieve the eye strain and while he had his eyes closed, it happened.
With a grotesque pop of bone, the vampire’s head popped off—popped freakin’ all the way off and the only monster still moving in the woods was standing on the dead vampire’s body. Kelly couldn’t see colors well in the dark, but the wolf’s muzzle was wet with something dark as he lifted his head to the moon and howled.
“Don’t move,” muttered Meg. “I mean it. Nobody move. Don’t meet his eyes and if you do, go down to your knees and bow your head.”
“Werewolves are supposed to be friendly,” said Trace, trying to jerk out of Meg’s hold.
The werewolf who had been Kelly’s blind date focused his attention on Trace. Asil’s upper lip curled back, exposing fangs that were bigger and more dangerous looking than the fangs of the tiger Kelly had seen yawning in a zoo when he was six. He’d had nightmares after that visit for years.
Trace had the same reaction as Kelly’s six-year-old self. His mouth dropped open and fear pulled his eyes wide in a cartoonish expression. “Holy shit. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Meg thumped Trace on the back of his head sending him staggering forward because he wasn’t ready for it at all. He landed in a graceless sprawl not ten feet from the werewolf and almost on top of the vampire’s head. Trace lifted his head and got a face-to-bleeding-amputated-neck view of the vampire, made a squeaky noise, and passed out cold.
Asil moved off the vampire, his body moving in a stiff and jerky caricature of the graceful power of his fight. Yellow eyes grabbed Kelly—and he was sure they were yellow, even in the darkness.
“Kelly,” said Meg urgently.
“He promised he wouldn’t hurt me,” said Kelly, and the wolf’s eyes focused on him. Unbearable pressure dropped Kelly as quickly as Meg’s shove had dropped Trace and he bowed his head.
“We’ll do what we promised,” Kelly told the ground. “We’ll explain to Trace that messing with other people’s dating is dangerous. We’ll explain why knowing about vampires is even more dangerous and that he should keep his mouth shut. We’ll talk to her uncle if there is a problem. We’ll trust you to take care of the body.” He paused. “Thank you for the most interesting date of my life. Much better than I expected when I started out to the restaurant today.”
A Fantastic Holiday Season Page 30