by Rob Cornell
The vamp knocked over by the door had recovered and he charged at Lockman. This time, Lockman was ready. He swung his aim toward the oncoming vamp and fired twice into its face. The silver rounds obliterated the front half of its head and most of the brain inside, leaving a hollow scoop formed by the back of its skull. The vamp dropped.
Lockman returned his aim to Mandy. “Get off of her.”
“Another move and she’s dead,” the female in the corner said.
Mandy put her hands on either side of Teresa’s head and hissed through her fangs.
“Mandy,” Teresa cried. “It’s me. It’s your sister. Don’t do this.”
Mandy hitched as if laughing, only the sound from her mouth sounded more like screech. “I know who you are, bitch. And you don’t matter anymore. I’ve outgrown you. I’m so much more now. So…powerful.”
“Except,” Lockman said, “for your weakness to silver, religious symbols, fire, and sunlight. Those things kind of put a damper on all that power.”
Mandy growled at him and showed off her fangs. “I’ll feed on you when I’m done with her.”
Lockman tsked. “You freshies. So cocky.”
“Enough,” the female in the corner said. “Drop your weapons.”
Marty pointed at her with his sword. “I’ll die before I submit to a vampire.”
“No.” Her lip curled. “You won’t die. Your blood is too precious.”
Marty cried out and charged her.
“Marty, no.”
He stopped himself halfway across the room, still holding his sword high, his green skin tinged red. Mandy had bent over when Marty started moving, her open mouth an inch from Teresa’s neck. Teresa struggled under her. “Mandy, stop. Please.”
Lockman kept his aim on Mandy. “Teresa. What do you want me to do?”
She lifted her chin and looked Lockman straight in the eye. Tears streamed down her cheeks. The agony in her face drove a lance through his heart. “There’s no cure for vampirism.”
He inhaled through his nose, nodded, and took the shot.
The top of Mandy’s head exploded. A mess of black brain and dark blood rained over Teresa, who had shoved her face into the bed’s comforter and placed her hands over her head. Mandy rolled off of her and tumbled to the floor on the bed’s far side.
The surviving vamp’s eyes went wide. Her yellow irises flared.
Teresa scuttled off the bed and ran to Lockman’s side, sobbing. She clung to him. Blood, bits of skull, and brain—pieces of her sister—matted her hair. Lockman wanted to torture the vamp in the corner. Burn her with silver. Drive her mad by shoving a crucifix in her face. Cut off her limbs and throw her screaming body into a flame.
But Marty was closer.
He howled as he ran at her, sword raised. She reacted, moving so quickly Lockman missed it when he blinked. She caught Marty’s sword arm and twisted. An ogre’s bones are near as thick as logs and twice as strong. But the vamp snapped his arm back at the elbow with ease. He cried out and dropped his sword. The vamp gripped him by the throat and pulled his face down to her level. “I just drank the blood of your brethren. I am invincible.”
Lockman sidled to his left to get a clear shot. “We’ll see about that.” He emptied his pistol into her chest, throwing her back into the corner.
Smoke hissed out of the bullet holes as the silver rounds burned through her flesh. She staggered, but did not fall. Then the rounds started popping out of her wounds and pattering onto the carpet. She grinned as the smoking holes closed before their eyes.
Marty dropped to his knees, holding his broken arm above the elbow while his forearm dangled loosely.
The vamp touched her healed skin through one of the tears in her shirt. “That hurt,” she said. “But not too much.”
She leapt over Marty and sailed through the air at Lockman.
He dove to the side, pulling Teresa with him, right before the vamp pounced onto the space where they had stood. He twisted on the way down so that he hit the floor first and cushioned Teresa’s fall. The vamp grabbed Lockman’s ankle and dragged him to her. He threw his empty pistol up at her and knocked her on the head. It stunned her for a second, but her grip on his ankle didn’t give.
She snarled, reached down, and grabbed him by the shirt collar. Then she hoisted him above her head and tossed him across the room. He tore through the canopy above the bed, hit the bed, and bounced off onto the floor. Before he could shake off his disorientation, the vamp was on his back. She sank her fangs into his shoulder.
Lockman had never felt a vampire bite before. The pain was indescribable. It didn’t only radiate from the wound, it exploded through his whole body as if tiny copies of the vamp’s fangs chewed on his every nerve. He screamed so hard a trickle of blood ran down the back of his throat.
He expected to feel the vamp tear a hunk of his shoulder away between her teeth. Instead, she echoed his scream and fell off his back. Lockman didn’t waste time looking to see what had happened. He crawled forward to the wall and used it to claw his way back to his feet. When he did turn, he found Marty wielding his sword with his good hand, the blade imbedded in the vamp’s neck.
She thrashed away from him, yanking the sword out of his grip. The blade stayed in her neck as she staggered toward the door. Teresa, still on the floor, scrambled to grab the vamp’s leg and trip her. But the vamp kicked out and caught Teresa square in the nose, which crunched and immediately started bleeding.
The vamp slipped out the door. As much as Lockman wanted to go after her, he stayed put. He had nothing to fight her with, and the strength the ogre blood gave her made her too dangerous to confront.
Marty watched, nostrils flaring, as the vamp escaped. Lockman could tell the same thoughts ran through the ogre’s mind. As much as he wanted to pursue her, a vamp that could break an ogre’s arm was no vamp to mess with while wounded and unarmed.
The sobbing made them both turn. Teresa knelt on the floor beside her sister. Sensing his and Marty’s gaze, she looked up. The tears streaming down her face ran with her sister’s blood. She looked as if she had streaked war paint down her cheeks. “I’m going to kill them. Every damned last one of them. I don’t care how many.”
Lockman wanted to reassure her, tell her he would fight at her side until every vamp in New Orleans had fallen. But two mortals and an ogre against an army of vamps fueled with ogre blood didn’t make for very good odds. For the first time in memory, Lockman felt like he’d entered a battle with the supernatural they simply could not win.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Yora’s neck burned with pain as she dashed through the night, the ogre’s sword still embedded in her neck. She was lucky the blade wasn’t made of silver. Even with the ogre blood in her veins, this sort of wound might have killed her.
She ran as far as she could, searching for cover. She needed to get this damned sword out of her neck. But when she pulled it free, her blood would flow quickly from her body and carry her strength with it.
The best possible hiding place presented itself at last—a small cemetery with the traditional above-ground crypts common to the area. She forced her way into one of the crypts, closed herself in. The pitch blackness soothed her. She crawled into a corner and leaned against the stone wall. She sat there a moment, not ready to pull the sword free. It would hurt. But pain never bothered a vampire like it did mortals. The blood loss frightened her though. She had never had such a deep wound. While she knew she could survive, given the time to heal, she didn’t know how long it might take or how weak it would leave her.
Worse yet, her king would wonder where she had gone. When he learned of her failure and the losses taken at the pimp’s house, he would not be pleased. After she recovered and returned to him, he might decide to show her the light anyway.
She bared her fangs to the darkness.
No. She had not failed completely. Thanks to the pimp’s magic, she would get another chance. She dug into her pocket and withdrew the amul
et LaRue had charmed for her, held it in a tight fist. With her free hand she yanked the blade free and tossed it across the crypt. A waterfall of blood ran down her neck and over her shoulder. A deepening cold welled inside of her as her very life force leaked from her body. She shuddered. Her legs jerked on their own, her heels knocking at the crypt floor. She could feel consciousness fading.
Before it took her, she slipped the amulet’s chain over her head. Almost instantly her mind connected to his. Now she knew his name.
Craig Lockman.
When she recovered, she would find him. She would bring him to her king and stand by as her king praised her, then decided the wicked mortal’s fate. Perhaps His Majesty would turn Lockman into one of their own. No sense wasting such strength and skill. And what better fate than forcing him to join that which he had sworn to fight?
She drifted into sleep, letting the magical tug toward Lockman comfort her. When she woke, she would follow that tug, she would make her master proud.
Chapter Thirty-Six
They finished packing, and then Mom asked the inevitable question, the one Jessie had dreaded since their decision to go to Craig for help, because she knew Mom wouldn’t like the answer.
“How are we going to find him?”
Jessie zipped her backpack closed and set it on the bed. The bitter smell of stale cigarette smoke filled the motel room. Funny. She hadn’t noticed that smell before. Of course, many of her senses had sharpened since…since whatever had happened to her.
“I have to do it.”
Mom frowned. “What does that mean?”
She knew what it meant. She just didn’t want to admit it. Jessie stared at her, waiting for Mom to come around to it on her own.
Her frown deepened. Her pallor lightened. She shook her head so slightly, Jessie could have missed it if she wasn’t watching her so closely.
Jessie held her silence.
“No,” Mom said finally.
“You have a better idea? He’s not answering his phone. We have no idea where he is—”
“He’s in New Orleans.”
“That narrows it down.”
Mom folded her arms. “You don’t have to get snarky. There’s no call for that.”
Jessie sighed. “We can’t show up in New Orleans and wander around looking for him.”
“What makes you think you can find him…your way.”
Because part of him is inside of me. She didn’t say that, though. It would only freak Mom out even more. She glanced at her backpack where she had zipped up the cube in the front pocket. “I just know.”
“Which means cutting yourself again.”
Now she looked toward the motel bathroom. “I don’t think so.”
Mom followed Jessie’s gaze, brow furled. “What’s in there?”
“Craig’s blood,” Jessie said. “From when you dug the tracking device out.”
“It’s all dried up. Most of it’s soaked into gauze pads.”
“So? It’s worth trying, right? And it’s Craig’s blood. Something tells me that might help with finding him.”
Mom’s eyes darkened. “What tells you?”
The voices inside of me. Jessie shrugged. “Just a hunch.”
But Mom saw straight through her. “It has something to do with that thing.” She pointed at Jessie’s backpack.
“We have to find him.”
Mom pulled out the cell Craig had given her. “I’ll keep trying his phone. He has to pick up eventually.”
“He’s not going to pick up.”
“Is the cube telling you that, too?”
“He made you take that phone. Knowing Craig, he would have checked in by now. Something must have happened.”
Despite all the angry words against Craig, Mom showed a glimpse of worry in her eyes. It heartened Jessie to see it. It gave her hope there was still a chance to pull them back together.
“Let me try, Mom. Craig might need us as much as we need him.”
Mom chewed her lip. Jessie could tell she had gotten through. Finally. But her mom still tried to cling to her anger. “If he is in trouble, finding him will only make things worse for us.”
“Have you forgotten everything he did for us?”
The window unit air conditioner kicked on. It’s whirr sounded twice as loud as Jessie remembered. How had she slept with that thing roaring through the night?
“I just want you to be safe, Jess. Do you understand?”
Jessie’s chest tightened. She crossed the room and took her mom’s hands in hers. Squeezed. “I understand. But I think it’s time we came to terms with reality. Safe for us is a whole different thing than safe for other people. We’re never going to be as safe as we used to be.”
“I can’t accept that.”
“If you want normal, you can’t just leave Craig. You’ll have to leave me, too. Whether you want to admit it or not, I’m a freak. I’m as much a part of that world as Craig now.”
Mom closed her eyes a moment. When she opened them, she lifted Jessie’s hands and held tightly. “You are not a freak. You’re special.”
“Okay, that just makes me sound retarded.”
“Stop it.”
Jessie hung her head. “Yeah, that was mean.”
“Okay,” Mom said and gave Jessie’s hands a shake. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay, you know what.” She cocked her head toward the bathroom. “Do your thing.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
They upgraded their headquarters, moving from Teresa’s studio apartment to a furnished two bedroom flat on the ground floor. Marty needed the space to rest and recover. They set him up in one of the bedrooms. His brothers rotated in at regular intervals to check on him. One of them was a shaman like Marty, giving up the warrior arts for magic and medicine. Lockman had always assumed Marty’s choice to become a shaman had more to do with the chip in his head that kept him from violence against mortals rather than any actual higher calling. Seeing another ogre shaman gave him second thoughts. And he could not deny Marty had proven himself an asset well beyond providing weapons and equipment. Marty turned out to be a valuable ally.
As long as Lockman could look past all that initial deception to get him involved.
Ogres weren’t like vampires or werewolves. They took time to heal like any mortal did. But all three of them needed the time. To step back, plan, and figure out how in hell their small crew could go toe-to-toe with a vampire legion.
Lockman sat at the computer they had moved from Teresa’s apartment and set up in the living room of the new one. The vampire bite burned under the bandage on his shoulder, but he let the pain sharpen his focus. He scanned local articles that hinted at any kind of vampire activity—disappearances, excessive blood loss, unusual sightings passed off as escaped zoo animals still roaming free since Katrina. While he cited the most likely vamp acts, Teresa used the old stand-by tool of a map on a corkboard, and stuck a red pin in each location in and around the city that Lockman rattled off to her.
When they had finished, they both stood before the map, Teresa’s hands on her hips, Lockman’s arms folded, both of them staring at the pins, looking for a pattern.
“I don’t see it,” Teresa said.
“There’s more around the Quarter.”
“Not enough to pin-point any sort of natural hub.”
Lockman rubbed his chin, exhaled. Fatigue pulled like gravity squared. All he wanted to do was lie down and get more than three hours of sleep in one go. No. That wasn’t all he wanted. He wanted to track down this so-called vamp king and lop off his fucking head.
Sleep could wait.
“We’re looking at this wrong,” he said.
Teresa stifled a yawn with her fist. Her eyes were red from the bouts of crying she thought she kept secret by hiding in the bathroom. The yellowish beginnings of a bruise rose around the bandage across her swollen nose. “I’m listening.”
“Why assume this king would sit at th
e center of the vamp activity? If he’s so important, he would want to stay protected, and away from all the dirty work.”
“He’s a vampire, not General Patton. He’d want to be in the thick of his carnage.”
“That’s the thing. Even after seeing their mass organization, we’re still assuming these vamps operate like vamps.”
“Just because they now come in large groups doesn’t change what they are.”
“Maybe not the bulk of them. The few we’ve picked off so far have been pretty standard. But that one at LaRue’s place. She was different. She commanded the others. Used your sister to bait you into a trap. Hell, sat in wait for all of us.”
“We already know vamps can strategize and work together. It happens all the time. It happened to you.”
Lockman remembered well enough the trained black-ops team of vamps that had attacked him when Jessie first came into his life. Vamp soldiers, coordinated and precise—until Lockman went on the offensive and rattled them. They had forgotten all about their mission and had let their bloodlust take over.
“Those vamps all had mortal masters. And they never maintained much restraint when threatened. These are vamps governing themselves. Different deal altogether.”
“Okay, let’s assume you’re right. Most vamps are still plain old vamps. But some of them have somehow managed to tame themselves enough to organize and control the others. How does that help us find them?”
Lockman pointed at the map. “We’re looking for a central location with vamp activity moving outward. Look at those sparser areas sticking out, almost like tentacles from the body.”
Teresa’s jaw dropped. “Only they’re not from the center. They’re pathways toward the center.”
An electric thrill ran through Lockman. This was the sweet center to the job. Breaking a secret of the paranormal world. Learning how the darker things worked so they could fight them all the better. He picked up a red marker from the desk and drew circles at the far points of each of the “paths.” Four spots.
“If those are the sources,” he said, thumping a fingertip into the center of each circle, “then we’ll find our king at one of them.” Something else struck him. “Aw, shit. It’s so obvious.”