It was the shriek that pulled me back to reality. I looked up in time to see Gladys barreling towards us. She had murder in her eyes and her fangs were out. And Zoey had cleared a nice path for the old crone in her rush to get to her daddy and give me a hug.
Oops.
“Daddy has to go to work now baby,” I said.
She looked up at me, her eyes wide and tears pooling there. Clearly she didn’t want to leave me, but there were times when a man had to do things, and this was one of those times.
I wasn’t going to let these assholes hurt my little girl again. If they thought they were going to get close to her after turning her into a vampire then they had another thing coming.
I pushed her to the side. “Go find someplace quiet and hide.”
She nodded and scampered off. On all fours. A lot faster than any little kid had any business moving.
I sighed. That was going to be interesting. It was bad enough dealing with a rugrat when they were human. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it was going to be when she had super strength and claws and all the other things I’d seen from vampires.
I had bigger things to worry about for the moment though. Like the ancient hag who was coming for me at full speed. I sighed. No rest for the wicked and all that.
I was so tired though. I’d been through a lot over the past couple of days. Fought off a vampire when I didn’t think vampires existed. Fought off three more vampires in my house. Watched my wife killed in front of me. My daughter kidnapped. I’d thwarted an evil vampire plan to take over the world.
It was a lot for one guy. Sure I dealt with it because shit happens and you deal with that shit, but it was still a lot.
I was tired. I didn’t feel like having a big knock down drag out fight with Gladys. Sure the bitch deserved one hell of a boss fight, but I wasn’t feeling it.
So just before she reached me I reached over my shoulder. Pulled out my shotgun. Leveled it right at her chest just before she reached me.
I had the satisfaction of watching her bitchy old eyes go wide with surprise one last time before I pulled the trigger.
Oh yeah. Gladys was going to learn a lesson I’d come to understand over the past couple of days the hard way. She might be an ancient vampire who’d killed who knows how many people over the years, but even an ancient vampire hurtling across the room with her claws and fangs out isn’t going to stand against the stopping power of good old fashioned buckshot being delivered at high velocity from the barrel of a 12 gauge Remington made in the good old U.S. of A.
Her look of pure rage turned to a look of pure surprise as the buckshot made contact and knocked her on her ass. I stepped over her and fired a couple more times on her legs to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere.
Her claws lashed out and I stepped back. Damn. The old bitch was feisty even when she was down. I could respect that. It didn’t mean I was going to let her live, but I could respect that.
“Gladys,” I said. “I never did like you. I want you to know that.”
“This isn’t the end Byron!” she hissed.
I shrugged. “It might not be the end for me. I’m sure you have lots of friends who are going to come after me for what I’ve done in this town tonight, but I’ve got friends of my own and you’re missing the most important thing here.”
She stopped writhing and hissing. Looked up at me. Really looked at me. And I saw something there. Something I’d seen in the eyes of every other vampire I’d gone up against since this nasty business started.
It was a realization. A dawning understanding that maybe, just maybe, she’d fucked with the wrong person.
Unfortunately for her it was a realization that had come way too late. Which was about par for the course, really.
“What’s the most important thing?” she asked, sounding more like the real her and less like the undead abomination that had just been desperately trying to kill me.
“You’re not going to be around to see any of that.”
I pointed my shotgun at her chest. Gladys cackled. I paused.
“You’re going to shoot me? Have you learned anything about what you’re up against?”
I couldn’t help but laugh right along with her cackle. That seemed to unsettle her and her cackling stopped well before my laugh. I shook my head.
“Y’know Gladys. I’ve had a lot of vampires say the same thing. Thing is, I’ve killed enough of you that you should realize I know what the fuck I’m doing.”
I pulled the trigger. I figured buckshot to the chest would shred her heart just as well as a stake, and sure enough her back arched and she let out an unholy screech before settling back to the floor.
Gladys dying was unlike any of the other vampires I’d seen so far. Most of the others decomposed rapidly, but it was obvious they were going through the stages of decomposition. As though all the time since they’d died was being accelerated to take their body.
Gladys must’ve been a really old bitch though. Older than any of the other vampires I’d taken out. Older than even the Chief.
One moment she was staring up at me with all the surprise and hatred in the world, and the next she poofed into a pile of dust that settled to the floor. It was a ridiculous way to describe it, but it was also the only way I could think to describe it.
I sighed. All the tension that had been building for the past couple of days drained. It was over. I’d found my daughter and I’d killed the last major vampire, and it hadn’t even been that difficult to send her to the great beyond or whatever the fuck was waiting for vampires when they died.
I sincerely hoped all the assholes who said hellfire and damnation was on the other side of the veil for unholy abominations were right.
I sighed and leaned against a toppled desk. It was over. For now.
41
Dawn
I wasn’t sure how long I sat there in a daze. It was a tug at my leg that finally pulled me back into the real world.
I looked down. Smiled.
“Hey rugrat,” I said, pulling her into a hug.
She wrapped her little arms around my leg and it hurt but I wasn’t about to tell her to stop. We’d have to have a discussion about her new strength later, for sure, but for now I was so glad to have her there next to me that I didn’t care.
I’d dealt with pain before, and as far as I was concerned this was the best pain I’d ever felt.
“Come on kid,” I said into her hair. “Let’s get going.”
She looked up to me and her eyes glistened with tears threatening to break free.
“Where’s mommy?”
There must have been something about the look on my face that gave it away. The kid might be young, but she wasn’t stupid. And she was scary perceptive which was always a pain in the ass, but never more than in that moment when she realized what had happened.
“The bad people got her, didn’t they? ” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
I held her tight. What else could I do? I’d had a couple of days to get used to it, at least, and one hell of a therapeutic way to work through some of my anger, but now with my little girl in my arms trying her hardest not to cry it was getting to me too.
So I let go. Everything I’d been bottling up because I had a job to do finally came out. It was too much for me. It had always been too much for me, but I was able to push that aside while I had a job to do.
The job was over though. Now I had time to grieve.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed like that, but by the time we let go there was more grey in the room than darkness. I could make out the pile of ashes that had been Gladys.
Someone was going to have a hell of a time cleaning that up, but that someone wasn’t me. As far as I was concerned my time working for the campus police department was over and I’d put in one hell of a two week notice.
A pity, really. The benefits had been good, the job had been quiet, and the free tuition for the kid would’ve been nice down the line.
> I stood and walked over to the window. Saw the sun beginning to peek up over the horizon. I frowned. That was going to make getting out of here a little more difficult considering I had a little vampire with me now.
Then an idea occurred to me. Gladys had always sat at the front desk, but I’d only ever seen her there at night. Still, I’d seen her there during daylight hours sometimes, and there were blackout curtains along the front windows. I’d always thought those were excessive, but they made a hell of a lot more sense now.
I stepped into the front room and sure enough the curtains behind the heavily tinted windows were blackout curtains. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure no rays from the life giving ball of nuclear fire hanging in the sky would make it into the front lobby.
And now I could use that to my advantage. I ripped some of the curtains down and walked back to Zoey. Wrapped her in them like I was drying her off after a bath.
It was a little bit of normalcy in a sea of fucked up weirdness.
“What’s going on daddy?” she asked.
“We’re going to go for a little walk, and I don’t want the sun to get on you,” I said.
“Is that bad?”
“Something like that baby,” I said.
I still had so much to figure out. Raising a little girl was complicated enough. Raising a little girl who’d recently been turned to the undead was undoubtedly going to add some complications to that already complicated situation.
I’d do it though. For her. For Rachel’s memory. And because that was the one thing keeping me going right now.
I wrapped her up tight and made sure she had some room to see, but enough curtain hanging over her face that her eyes would be in the shadows.
“Make sure you keep this wrapped tight around you baby,” I said. “We don’t want the sun touching you.”
“Okay,” she said with a giggle.
Amazing. I’d heard all about how kids could bounce back from trauma, but I’d never seen the evidence right in front of me like this. She’d been bawling a few minutes ago and now she was giggling.
I was sure it wouldn’t be that easy. This was going to be a difficult transition, but it was a transition we would make together.
“Come on baby,” I said. “We’re gonna get going.”
I stepped out into the parking lot and turned to see a pink haze on the horizon. The sun wasn’t up quite yet, but I knew it could already do damage to a vampire even with a glancing blow from across the horizon.
I knew because Kinsey was still lying on the pavement with smoke rising from his exposed skin. He looked and sounded like he was having a pretty bad time of things, too.
He’d managed to crawl a few feet across the parking lot. As I watched the toasty bastard reached out with his clawed fingers and dragged himself a couple of inches.
Maybe I’d hurt Kinsey a little more than I intended. Not that I was going to lose any sleep over it. Let the bastard fry. It was the least he deserved for his part in the vast vampire conspiracy that had gripped campus.
I avoided him. The last thing I needed was something else to upset Zoey. So I gave the smoldering cop a wide berth.
Besides, there was something else to worry about on the other end of the parking lot. A nondescript black government car with U.S. Government plates. Leaning against that car were two government agents who were eyeing me and Kinsey with interest.
I figured there was no point trying to avoid them even though that was my first instinct considering I was carrying a pint-sized vampire in my arms.
“Anderson,” I said, nodding. “Hooks.”
“Byron,” Anderson said. “Nice to see you made it out of there alive.”
“Yeah, well you’re going to find a pile of ash by the front door in the shape of the former Chief of campus police,” I said.
“Oh yeah? He was the head vampire all along?” Hooks asked.
I snorted. “Hardly. The head vampire was an old crone by the name of Gladys. She ran the department with an iron fist. Guess it makes sense she was the head bloodsucker all along.”
Both government cops grunted, and I figured that was all the surprise I was going to get out of them. They seemed like the kind of dudes who didn’t get upset over much of anything.
“And what’s that in your arms?” Anderson asked.
The question was asked so casually that I almost wouldn’t have realized the dangerous undercurrent there if I hadn’t been listening for it. Not to mention all my experience with government intel pukes and the many and varied ways they could find to screw you over if you weren’t careful.
Sometimes even if you were careful.
“My girl,” I said.
“Odd choice wrapping her up in a blackout curtain,” Hooks observed.
I tensed. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do this. I liked these guys, but I wasn’t going to let them take Zoey from me and put her in some government lab where they did research on vampires or whatever the hell it was the U.S. government did to deal with the supernatural.
The problem was I had no idea how I was going to fight both of them off and keep her from stepping out of her blackout curtain and suffering the same fate as Kinsey. The screams were getting louder and I could hear the hissing from his sunburn on steroids now.
Not a pleasant way to go.
“She was cold,” I said.
“Come on Byron,” Anderson said. “We’re not stupid.”
I tensed. If it was going to come down to a fight then it was going to happen now. I’d already offed so many people to save Zoey that I figured adding two government intel pukes to the list wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Even if it would mean the end of the magical fairies that followed behind me waving their badges and covering up every crazy thing I’d done.
“We’re also not heartless,” Hooks said. “So stop acting like you’re ready to take us out and get in the damned car. We have tinted windows for a reason. She won’t need to hide under that ridiculous curtain.”
I blinked. Was it really going to be that easy? Then my eyes narrowed as a thought crossed my mind.
“We’re also not trying to capture you in our car,” Anderson said, sounding insulted. “Come on Byron. We’re the only two people in this town who’ve been on the up and up with you since the beginning.”
“Not to mention you just did us a major favor and sort of saved the world tonight,” Hooks said.
“You guys don’t sound all that worried about the world potentially ending,” I said.
They both shrugged.
“Some supernatural something or other is always trying to end the world,” Anderson said.
“And they’re still learning the hard way that it’s a lot more difficult to do these days,” Hooks continued.
I blinked. “It is?”
“Well yeah,” Anderson said. “I mean sure there are unspeakable hidden abominations of ancient power out there lurking in the world waiting for their chance to take over and plunge us back into the bad old days, but these days they have to deal with humans who have nifty things like atomic weapons and rocket launchers instead of a bunch of primitives waving spears and bows.”
“Huh,” I said. “Never thought of it that way.”
“Right, and you’re not thinking now,” Hooks said. “Would you get in the damned car before the sun rises? I really don’t want to see that pretty little girl getting a sunburn.”
I figured I could trust them. Sort of. Maybe. So I got into the car and Hooks slammed the door shut behind me.
It was nice and dark inside. The windows were tinted to a shade dark enough that it would be illegal for anyone but a cop.
Hooks and Anderson got into the front seats as Zoey peeked out of her blackout curtain and looked around.
Anderson grunted. “Looks like your friend there is healing up.”
I looked out across the parking lot. Kinsey was actually crawling now. Sort of. He looked like he was in an old World War II movie
crawling along the pavement a little faster now as his legs healed up.
“Can’t have that,” Hooks said.
Anderson turned the car on and gunned the engine. They moved slowly across the parking lot and I watched in fascination as Kinsey turned, realized he wasn’t alone in the parking lot, and started shuffling even faster.
Not that it was going to do him a damned bit of good.
“You’re going awful slow there,” Hooks said.
“You’re damn right,” Anderson replied. “I want the bastard to know what’s coming.”
The car moved across the parking lot at about five miles per hour. Slow enough that Kinsey might think he had a chance but fast enough that everyone could see he wasn’t going to get away in time.
“I was thinking more that the sun is going to get him if you don’t hurry up,” Hooks said.
“Nah, he still has a chance to get to some shade or I wouldn’t be doing this,” Anderson replied.
He did push the car up to about ten miles an hour though. Anderson might sound confident that Kinsey wouldn’t be able to make it, but it was also obvious he wasn’t interested in taking chances.
There was a double thump as their car ran over Kinsey’s legs. I held the munchkin against my chest and covered her ears as Kinsey screamed, but honestly I wasn’t all that upset that my former colleague just had both of his legs snapped, again, in what had to be a pretty painful way.
Anderson turned back to me and grinned.
“He’s not getting out of here before the sun comes up all the way,” he said.
“What did the man do daddy?” Zoey asked.
“Nothing darling,” I said, stroking her hair and looking back to where Kinsey was really starting to smolder.
“Did he take care of one of the bad men?” she asked, looking up at me with eyes that were surprisingly hard for a little girl who was almost old enough to start kindergarten. Eyes that reminded me of some of the stare downs I’d had with the mirror when I got back from the shit show overseas.
Yeah, maybe this was going to have a more lasting impact on Zoey than I’d hoped. I could understand considering what she’d been through, but I hated that she had to come out of this scarred emotionally as well as turned into a fucking vampire.
Blake Byron: Paranormal Investigator Page 27