“Hey, uhh thanks.” She didn’t touch me. Her breath was sweet with cola but no alcohol.
“Yeah, no problem.” I looked her in the face again. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I think so.” She gave a nervous laugh and glanced around us. “Sabrina really got in his face.”
“She seems like a good sister.”
Tabby nodded slowly. The lot lights caught a glimmer of a thin gold chain around her neck with a tiny cross hanging from it. I smirked. If only those worked.
I opened my arms. “You look like you need a hug.”
She nodded again and folded herself against me. I nuzzled her hair, intending only to savor her scent, but even that was too much temptation. She rolled her head to one side to expose her neck, and I took advantage. My fangs broke the skin, and her pulse filled my ears. Her blood trickled over my tongue, soothing my parched throat. She relaxed in my grasp and leaned into me with a soft moan.
I sucked lightly on the twin wounds, slicing my tongue across a fang to release my own blood so to seal the holes in one practiced gesture. Her eyes fluttered open when I finally let her go and she smiled, none the wiser.
“That was nice,” she whispered. Her features had gone from pinched and puffy to completely relaxed.
The lull was a natural vampire ability and came with the fangs. Some vampires were better than others at it. I guess I did okay, because generally the person didn’t remember anything afterward and felt really comfortable and happy. Blood drinking was like eating a hamburger when starving. There was that desperate gimmegimmegimme, followed by gorging, and ending up with satisfaction. I was satiated, and even smiled at her a little.
“Don’t let that asshole fuck with you, okay?”
Her glow faded, bringing back the sorrow she’d had to her face earlier. “He’s just difficult sometimes.”
“Yeah well, difficult leads to abuse, Tab.”
“Nobody’s ever called me Tab before.”
I opened the door for her. “There’s a first time for everything.”
She stared for a few more moments before ducking under my arm to walk back inside alone. I lit a cigarette and stepped off the porch for a stroll out to the parking lot to make sure her boyfriend had really taken off as ordered.
Nothing was out there, aside from parked cars and pickup trucks. Some ticked with cooling engine parts. I made a casual loop around and headed up the private drive to the rear overhang and garage. Sometimes the door was left unlocked back there, especially whenever Darrell staggered out to the lake for an impromptu swim. The lake was about eight hundred yards from the rear of Pale Rider and pretty much in our back yard, so we’d sometimes get a wild hair and go for a dunk. I liked swimming, just not boats. Being on a boat in water tended to make me seasick, even as a vampire. There weren’t any boats out there, just a busted-up dock Charlie kept meaning to fix, which terminated about half the length it should, and to a shredded point of torn-up wood where some douchebag’d clipped it years earlier with his fucking speedboat. There were also the remains of a boathouse, but it was reduced to three barely standing walls and half a roof. Charlie was going to tear it down, but running Pale Rider took most of his attention those days.
I stopped at the edge of bank, tossed away my cigarette and lit another. That far out, the sounds of nature overtook the noise back at the bar.
Water lapped lazily at the lake’s edge. A decent breeze sighed in the treetops, clacking a few branches together and whooshed through the evergreens, of which there were thousands. The resulting symphony put me at ease and made me smile as I gazed up at the moon. Wispy clouds rushed in front of it, giving it a smoke-blown appearance.
I heard it before I saw it. Crisp footsteps slashed through the grass. I threw my cigarette down and turned to face it. “It” was right. I couldn’t describe it as anything but. One thing was clear as the monster hurtled toward me with an inhuman screech: the thing had fangs.
I shifted to meet it shoulder-first, knocking it to the ground. It regained its footing with a snarl, and I threw my hands out to catch it by the shoulders. My fingers sunk into weak, rotting flesh. The meat on its bones gave like overbaked chicken and I kneed it in the junk as it went for me again. Its eyes were little more than milky, pus-filled sacs. Part of the cheek was torn away, exposing twin rows of razored, broken teeth. The thing shrieked at me and tried to bite. I shoved it back again.
What the fuck was it? Like a human gone really, really bad. No really. It stank like a decaying corpse and was obviously undead, but still a vampire of some sort. I held it at arm’s length, turning my face away from its horrible breath. Its arm broke off with a wet pop and snap, and I let go in revulsion. It immediately lunged for my throat again, so I ran. The thing was quick and bent on biting the shit out of me. I turned the corner around the back of the boathouse where I ripped off a two-by-four plank and met the fucker with a wet slap right in the face.
The board stuck to the zombie, so with a kick to the gut, I wrenched it loose, knocking it to the ground. I struck my attacker again and again with the wood, gagging at the splitting skin and crunching bones as I pulverized it with my makeshift weapon. When it didn’t move any more, I threw the board aside and looked down at myself, covered in nasty zombie-vampire spatter and funk. I peeled my shirt off and threw it down beside the...whatever it was.
Somebody clapped their hands like it was a piano recital. I turned to see a little guy in a black trench coat, with a scruffy goatee and round-framed glasses, grinning at me. He carried a stake in his hand.
“Is this yours?” I pointed at the body lying on the ground.
“I knew you were one of them.” He approached me, his weapon raised.
“One of what?” I grimaced at the nauseating odor emanating from the dead-undead thing. “Jesus, did you forget to bury a relative?”
“Vampire. Demon. Monster. Pick a name.” He smiled. “You’ve been unmasked for what you are.”
“You’re out of your fucking gourd. This thing attacked me.”
He glanced at it. “Wretched, your kind calls them. I take it you’ve never seen one.”
Hell no, I’d never seen one. I’d rather not again. Still, I wasn’t really surprised. There were stories that circulated among my kind of bad turns–the kind that failed, but I assumed they were fairy tales set up to scare me away from making my own offspring. Whatever I’d call somebody I made into a vampire. I think I was good to wait the full recommended century before creating another problem child. “What do you want?”
He stopped and opened his coat to pull out a bottle of what looked like water and threw the contents on me. It was warm and wet, but had no effect. His eyes widened.
“Was that supposed to be holy water or something?” I laughed and stepped up to him, closing the distance. He was shaking but held his ground. “You’re fucking serious aren’t you?”
“Soon you will become like the thing you just destroyed. I’m here to kill you, Xan Marcelles. To free you. To let you die in peace.”
I cocked my head. “Seriously. Do I look like a monster to you? Who the fuck are you?”
“Freddie Dickerson. I’ve been tracking you for some time. I kill vampires.”
There were groups and even singles that claimed to kill my kind. Up to then, the only ones I had to fear were my kind. With the arsenal and power another vampire could wield, a human coming at me seemed almost comical. I laughed. “With what, Freddie? Water? That toothpick you got in your hand? You’re going to try and stake me?”
“And send you to hell where you belong!” He raised both hands over his head and thrust the stake dead center in my chest, where it pierced muscle and struck bone. The stake was sharp, but he didn’t have the strength to actually drive it into me.
The pain of a pointed piece of wood striking my sternum was legitimate. White-hot agony zigzagged through my nerves as I clutched at the stake in a classic movie vampire move. But I wasn’t Dracula. I didn’t sleep in coffins and cower in the pre
sence of crosses. And this dude had just seriously pissed me off.
“Fuck!” I growled and gritted my teeth as I jerked the stake out of his hands. I held it between us, the tip stained with my blood, but his eyes were locked on the wound, already starting to heal. “You stupid motherfucker. That fucking hurt. Still, nice try. But there’s a problem, Freddie. Your methods? Don’t work.”
I let the useless weapon drop to the ground and grabbed him up by the lapels of his coat, pulling him close until our noses almost touched. His eyes bulged.
“You’ve been reading too many comics,” I rasped, showing fang, “watching too much Buffy. And now it comes down to this.”
“Oh shit, oh my God...”
“No, Freddie, you had to come out here after me. And you know what sucks the most?”
He stared at my fangs as I spoke to him. His gaze flicked back up to meet mine.
“Wha... What’s that...”
“I got a policy for fuckheads like you. Little bastards that think they know what’s going on. Assholes that try and take me out. Go ahead and give me your best shot. But if you don’t kill me, I have to kill you.” I clamped a hand over his mouth as he squirmed, and bit deep into his throat. His blood was bitter, laced with adrenaline from his fear, and tasted terrible, but I was so angry and triggered that I finished the job. His weight leaned into me as his struggles weakened and eventually stopped. The death hit with a cold finality and I broke away, to let his lifeless form crumple at my feet.
Son of a bitch. I hadn’t killed in years. His blood rushed through my veins, heightened my senses and invigorated me. There was always an uneasy balance against which I fought, the line between man and monster, and true to his accusation, I’d let the vampire out. I poked my tongue with a fang, too aware of what they could do. Pointed teeth that were my natural weapon, coupled with strength beyond what a regular dude should have, even after spending years without seeing the inside of a weight-lifting gym. My night had turned from an after-show cool-down walk to staring at the corpse of a man I’d just killed with hardly any questioning.
Who was Freddie, exactly? How the hell did he know I was here?
Chapter 2
I dragged Freddie’s body into the boathouse, and tried to figure out my next move. The Wretched had liquefied in a matter of minutes, and all that remained of the thing was a foamy wet spot. Freddie, on the other hand, would have to be disposed of properly.
I hurried back to Pale Rider and, instead of walking inside, since my clothes were a mess, I jumped to pull myself up onto the lower level roof to make way to my window and slip inside. In my room, I grabbed another pair of jeans and a t-shirt and darted from my door to the bathroom across the hall to clean myself off and change clothes.
Once I’d thrown my dirty jeans in a trash bag and tied it off, I pulled my hair back with an elastic band and checked myself in the mirror for any leftovers on my face. As much as I didn’t care to go back downstairs, I had to. A body was cooling out in the boathouse. It wasn’t like there was a good chance anyone would wander that far out at that time of night, but who knew?
I went back downstairs and ran into Darrell schmoozing a brunette at her table. “Have you seen Scott?”
Darrell looked up from her tits and frowned. “Dude, he went home. He figured you took somebody upstairs.” He raised his hips, mimicking a pretty lewd gesture, which prompted a giggle from the girl.
“Okay, what about Serv?”
Darrell pointed absently in a vague direction on the other side of the place and shooed me off. I rolled my eyes and scanned the crowd for Pinecliffe’s other vampire.
I found him with his girlfriend, Elaine, at a bigger table, along with about five other people. Elaine was a Goth chick of about twenty, with deep red hair and green eyes. She wore black lacy dresses a lot and always looked like she was ready for a funeral. Tonight she was in a black-and-green number, the green peeking out through vertical slits in satin. The dress reminded me of coffin lining. She never talked much, just clung to Serv’s arm like a trophy girlfriend. They were all laughing at Serv’s jokes, and the females busied themselves by dragging their gazes over him. His natural charisma around people attracted them. Serv must have seen the fear on my face, as he picked up his drink and excused himself from his group.
“What’s wrong?”
“I got a little problem I need your help with,” I said once we were out of earshot and as we headed toward the back door.
He stopped at the threshold and gestured to his drink. “Let me finish this first.”
“Fuck your drink. I need you to come outside. Now.” I grabbed the glass from his hand and sat it down on the nearest table. “Now.” I took hold of his wrist and dragged him out the door after me.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.” I walked ahead of him without looking back. He had to almost run to keep up with my long strides.
“Why are we going to the lake?”
“We’re not. We’re going to the boathouse.”
“What’s at the boathouse?”
I growled and spun around to face him. “You ask too many fucking questions, Serv. Just shut up and follow me. I’m going to show you.”
He put his hands out. “Okay, man. Whatever.”
A wind had picked up, blowing ripples across the lake water and dropping the temperature another few degrees. The clouds overhead had fled, leaving the moon staring down at us with luminescent apathy.
Serv stopped short of entering the small enclosure when he saw the body. His gaze slid over to me, wide-eyed. “What did you do?”
“He knew what I was.”
“Oh, fuck.” He approached the corpse with caution to kneel and touch the cooling skin, snatching his hand back as if it’d been burned. “He’s dead.”
“Yeah. And he staked me.”
“Fuck, Xan. He was trying to kill you? Why?”
“I have no idea, really. He knew what I was and was bent on telling me what a monster I am. So now I have a problem with a slight bit of human remains.”
He rose to his feet, looking down at the still form with what appeared to be a mixture of surprise and fear. “Yeah, I’d say you do. What about the cops? Did you see him earlier tonight?”
“No, he came out of nowhere.” I left out the part about the weird rotting zombie thing that had attacked me. It wouldn’t do any good, and I needed Serv to help, not interrogate me half the night.
He bit his lip, his eyebrows furrowed. “There’s the forest back there.”
“I could bury him, yeah.” I rubbed my face. “I can’t believe I killed him.”
“What did it taste like?”
“What did what taste like?”
Serv’s eyes were big and dark with hunger. “Killing him.”
I scowled. “It’s not like I wanted to. We’re not supposed to be killing customers. We can’t murder people like this. It’s kind of illegal.”
“But he was asking for it, right?”
I held up a hand. “Don’t.”
Serv laughed, showing his little fangs. “Easy for you to say. You actually got a full meal. And I’m thinking why are we gifted with this if not to be predators?”
I rolled my eyes. “You sound like a cliche vampire novel. You want to help me get this thing out of here?”
“Yeah, but you’re going to have to wait at least another hour ’til everyone leaves. Right now, we can just leave him out here. It’s cold enough outside. He’ll stay fresh.”
* * * *
Reluctantly I went back in with Serv to rejoin Josh, Bea and Darrell. They were drunk. I wasn’t. It was a weird reversal. Usually by then I’d be nuzzling girls indiscriminately, but my problem had sucked up the remainder of the evening at Pale Rider. Serv was right about the temperature, though. When the last patron had gone, Serv followed me back out to the boathouse without a fight, even to the point of seeming excited, but he’d never really been right in the head. I’d known without a doubt when he
walked into Pale Rider for tryouts that he was another vampire. Still, I auditioned him. His voice was strong, most likely a side effect of being immortal. I chose him for the spot, on the spot, against deeper misgivings, since he looked practically brand-new to the blood. After that we just kind of coexisted, in secret knowledge of what the other really was.
Of course Freddie’d shat his pants, and from the acrid stench he’d pissed himself too. I hated touching him. I hated dead things. It was an ingrained aversion I couldn’t explain, but who really wants to fuck around with a corpse? His body had stiffened a little, making it easier to throw him over my shoulder barbarian-style to carry him out to my car. The subtle gleam of moonlight on the navy metal flake paint matched the ivory dual racing stripes extending from nose to tailfin. I was about to stuff a stiff in my car. The thought was nauseating.
“We forgot bags.” The body slumped against the RS while I dug in my pocket for the keys. “Go get bags.” I opened the trunk.
“Didn’t you drain him?” Serv squinted against the sudden light. He leaned in to check out the tiny space. Nothing was in sight except for the spare tire. “You have a mat in here anyways.”
“Serv, this is a cherry sixty-seven Camaro RS. As in perfect. I am not putting a body in my trunk without bagging it first. Do you know why? Because bodies leak stuff, and not just blood.”
His eyes widened. “Oh.”
“There’s some lawn-and-leaf ones in the garage. Bring the box.”
He disappeared in the shadows once he reached the overhang and I heard the garage door open. I shook my head at the noise he was making and cursed when he snapped the light on. New vampires still had a tendency to carry habits of the living, like turning on lights when they entered a dark room, even though they didn’t need to. We were creatures of the night; we could see fine in the dark if we waited a few seconds. I covered my face with a hand as he rummaged around in plain view of anyone from that angle. Thank fuck he found the box quickly. He turned the light off then slammed the fucking garage door down. I smacked him in the head when he reached the car again.
Crooked Fang Page 3