Fangtastic

by Lucienne Diver

  “Stop!” Bobby ordered, reaching for his other power, telepathy. He could compel others as well as talk mind-to-mind.

  Burly Boy halted, but Nelson didn’t so much as flinch. Of course he’d be one of the few who, like me, was immune to the compulsion.

  Seeing him still rushing at Bobby, I rallied and got to my feet, swaying from the pain in my head that threatened to split me down the middle. Terrence, I noticed, was trying to crawl away, but one of the downed girls who’d landed nearby reached out to grab his ankle in a death grip. He cried out, but Bobby was my bigger concern. The world stopped moving on me just in time to see Bobby dodge the bat Nelson swung at him and then yank it out of his hand. He never saw the threat in the other hand coming—Nelson pulled a stake from a waistband or pocket or thin air and before I could react, it was buried in Bobby’s chest.

  He went down hard, and my heart went with him. The seams of my dress ripped as I let out a mighty roar and scissor-kicked Nelson, catching him right under the chin as he spun away from Bobby’s fountaining blood. I didn’t spare a glance for where he fell, but dropped to Bobby’s side immediately, afraid to touch him, more afraid not to.

  His eyes were open and he was staring at me, his mouth opening, but nothing coming out. The stake had hit right of center. Or maybe that was just my wishful thinking. The heart was slightly left, right? No, the stake couldn’t have hit his heart. I insisted. Not Bobby. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was mine.

  I dragged a nail across my wrist and got some drops into his open mouth before hands clenched on my shoulders and dragged me away. Burly Boy, free from Bobby’s compulsion, had caught me. I fought against him like a wildcat, needing to get back to Bobby, to see if he’d swallowed, if he was alive. I didn’t know … they never covered this kind of thing in super-spy training. Should I have pulled the stake? Could he heal with it still stuck inside him?

  “Bobby!” I cried out, like that would help, like his name alone would bring him back from the dead.

  “Take her,” Nelson ordered. “And Terrence.”

  “What about him?” Burly Boy asked, nodding at Bobby.

  “He’s no good to anyone anymore.”

  “Nooo!” I didn’t know if I said it out loud. I didn’t know anything anymore except that he could NOT die. Not for real. I kicked out again and managed to catch Burly Boy in the shin. He cried out and dropped all his weight onto his other leg, momentarily unbalanced so that when I hurled myself to the side, he had to let me go or fall along with me.

  The girls were up again. Elise held Terrence in an

  inescapable grip, but Kelly was free and, like her two friends, fully focused on me. It was three against one.

  A war cry sounded from the end of the alley, drawing all eyes before the killer kids could jump me again.

  Eric appeared out of nowhere, looking like something out of one of the Librarian movies. The crazy inventor came charging at us, swinging a cane from which he pulled a slender sword.

  The kids didn’t wait for us to bring the fight to them. Burly Boy dove for me again, sheer fists of fury since he’d lost his bat. I was unarmed but ready for him this time, and sidestepped, grabbing his arm as he went by to propel him forward—face-first, I hoped, into the pavement.

  Eric reached my side, waving the sword around wildly to ward off the others and pulling something that looked like a watch out of his pocket. This was so not the moment to check the time. I was pretty sure the killer kids agreed. I could tell by their body language that Nelson and Kelly were getting ready to spring when a blur of motion came from behind and Eric dropped like a ton of bricks. Burly Boy had found his bat and used it upside Eric’s head. I was next. Too stunned by everything that had just happened to dodge this blow, I went down, Eric’s body half-breaking my fall.

  “You’d better not have scrambled his brains,” Nelson growled at Burly Boy. “We need him.”

  “His powers, not his mind,” Burly protested, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Just pray they’re not one and the same. Load him up with the others,” he ordered.

  I was grabbed roughly and tossed over Burly Boy’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The metal baseboards of the van cracked my back, but it was my front getting all the attention as Burly Boy felt me up, searching for contraband. He found my two phones and tossed them into the alley just as Nelson threw Eric in next to me. Elise thrust Terrence in as well. The latter scuttled to a corner of the van, where he huddled in a protective ball.

  My heart ached for Bobby as the doors slammed shut, locking us in and him out. I couldn’t help seeing that stake in his chest, blood pouring out, the vacant look on his face … I called out to him mentally to fight, to live. Though I knew they couldn’t hear me, I even cried out silently to Marcy and Brent to find him and to the universe at large. Bobby had a destiny. The psycho-psychic had said so. He hadn’t yet achieved it, and therefore … He. Could. Not. Die.

  No one answered me. No one.

  The whole van smelled like blood—Eric’s, mine, Burly Boy’s. Strangely, not Nelson’s. If anyone had gotten in a decent blow at him, it hadn’t so much as broken the skin. I wished him internal bleeding and much of it.

  I needed to get some of that blood into me, to build up my strength so we could escape and take the kids down. Because I would take them down for what they did to Bobby. If it was the last thing I ever did.

  I tested my strength. Sure enough, my legs twitched when I told them to and the rest of my body was coming back online, recovering from the repeated blows to the head that had knocked me all but senseless. Another minute or two and I could probably wrestle a kitten into submission. Maybe even a full-grown cat.

  Nelson was too smart to get close enough for me to grab. But Eric … surely he wouldn’t mind donating some blood to aid his escape. Maybe I could just lap up some of the blood that was free-flowing from his head wound, clean it up a little for him. But after what had happened with Kelly, I was still a little afraid to feed in need. What if I lost myself again and couldn’t stop in time? Eric I actually liked.

  I inched toward him, hoping the motion of the van would mask my movement. I’d no sooner gotten close than Nelson grabbed me by my shiny red belt and yanked me against him instead, wrapping his arms around me to hold them to my sides, careful to keep all of his extremities outside biting range. I kicked and fought like an alley cat, but it didn’t do me a bit of good. For someone who was human, he was preternaturally strong, and for someone who looked all of seventeen, he was supernaturally scary.

  I craned my neck until I could look him in the eyes. If they were windows into the soul, his was a neglected locker room—ripe and rank with the stench of body odor, sweat socks, and dirty jock straps. In a word, vile.

  “Who are you?” I gasped.

  “I am Chaos.”

  “Go to hell, that’s my title.” Even if I didn’t have the tiara and sash to prove it.

  “The hell it is,” he answered as the van careened wildly around a corner, sandwiching me between Eric’s unconscious body and his own evil incarnate. My skin literally tried to crawl away from Nelson’s touch, but there was no escaping the iron grip. I started to focus on survival, watching the windows, trying to see where we were so that when we got away …

  We stopped after ten to twenty minutes of hell, and Burly Boy leapt out to raise a door by hand. I could hear it rattle along its groove, even though I couldn’t really see from my position on the floor. Some sort of garage or loading bay door, from the sound of it. Either not automated or without power. A fat lot of good that knowledge did when a third of the state seemed to be for sale or foreclosure. Deserted sites were probably a dime a dozen. I needed more intel.

  Nelson hauled me out roughly. “I’ve got this one.”

  Elise and Burly Boy reached for the others, and I saw Eric’s eyelids flicker upward for a second. But if the light was on, no one was home. I didn’t see any awareness, any fight. He was either a very good actor or Burly had
really scrambled his brains with that blow to the head.

  Nelson carried me through the hangerlike loading bay and into an area that looked like it used to be office space. The only things left behind were cheap metal carts, like the kind used to wheel supplies or mail around an office. Nelson started to tip me onto one of them as Burly Boy came through the door carrying Eric. The survival instinct rose up in me, and I kicked a foot free to send my cart careening into the next so that it slammed against the wall. Burly Boy dropped Eric to the floor to help Nelson with me. I clawed and kicked, but between them both they managed to get me up onto a cart and tied down with some kind of super-strong cord.

  But I’d finally bloodied Nelson. He’d carry the scratches from my nails for a good long time. Maybe they’d even scar. A start on my payback for Bobby.

  14

  I lost myself for a little while, strapped down to an autopsy table while Burly Boy went back and forth poking me with needles and hooking me up to all kinds of things from a third cart they wheeled in. It looked like a mobile Frankenstein’s lab, with bags, tubing, tools, and—most chillingly—a machine about the size of an old-school hatbox, like the one I’d kept all my curlers and scrunchies in back home. Eric’s energy transference device? I looked over to see him strapped to the table beside me, his nutty-professor hair going every which way. He was awake and alert again, taking it all in with a mix of horror and fascination on his face.

  “We’re screwed,” he said when Burly Boy left, apparently for the final time.

  I couldn’t help but agree. It wasn’t like me to wallow. But Bobby … those wicked blue eyes dancing with mischief as he’d whipped my towel off back at headquarters, the way his lips tasted, the scent of him all good enough to eat …

  Gina. I could almost hear his voice in my head, calling my name.

  Gina, I’m here. Marcy and Brent got to me in time.

  My mind was playing tricks on me.

  Bobby? I asked, afraid to hope. Is that really you?

  Next time, pull out the stake.

  I laughed, and Eric looked at me like I was nuts, but if crazy meant Bobby was still alive, I’d take it.

  I love you, I said without thinking. Don’t you dare let there be a next time.

  I’d surprised him. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. It was one of those mind-speak things.

  I love you too, he said back. Always.

  If my heart didn’t restart then, it never would. I loved him. So much it was stupid. Enough to feel alive again and then some. We were getting out of this, and I was going to kick killer-kid booty for them scaring me like that.

  Where are you? he asked. He was getting fainter, fading away. This had to be a lot for him after everything he’d been through tonight.

  Don’t know. I tried to mentally send him everything I had, from the loading doors to the layout, but it wasn’t much. No street names, nothing.

  We’ll find you, he promised.

  I wasn’t going to count on it, but at this point, just knowing that Bobby was okay was enough. I could save myself. Hell, I could save us all. Maybe. Probably. I hoped.

  I turned to Eric. “We’re getting out of this.”

  “It’s all my fault,” he answered, even though I couldn’t see what one thing had to do with the other.

  “Huh?”

  “I never thought about how the technology could be used. I developed it to give the wounded enough strength to hang on until they could get help or reach the top of a transplant list. Not … this.” He nodded, and my gaze followed his to the hatbox-sized gizmo, the one they had me hooked to.

  “What are they doing to me?”

  “At a guess, draining both your blood and your strength. That’s my energy transference machine. But they’ve modified it somehow.”

  “So your machines really do work … ” I started, before I could help myself.

  “Well, of course they work.” He was getting fired up at my very suggestion. “Why do you think Nelson’s friends wanted them so badly? They came back for this machine at the pawnshop, didn’t they? But I never considered they’d use it on vampires.” He glared at me accusingly. “You and your people are like rechargeable batteries. You can keep going and going. Anyone in possession of my work can keep draining and draining, transferring your energy. If you live forever, they can too.”

  “So it’s basically an eternity machine?!” I didn’t mean it to come out quite so forcefully. I mean, Eric already felt responsible enough, but damn that was a lot to answer for.

  “I didn’t know.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to think. If Bobby and I were right, it was Eric’s power—his belief in a machine—that made it work. Upside: the killer kids couldn’t possibly mass produce the gizmos without Eric’s support. Downside: they didn’t have to. If they wanted to live forever, grow up to rule the world, well, they were off to a strong start right now. And with no other Eric to go around, they had the market cornered on his technology. Plus, they now had him for handy blood donations to recharge the battery—aka me. Were Terrence and the girl he’d talked about being hooked up like a medical experiment in the same boat? Captive donors? Had Nelson, or whoever was walking around in his skin, figured out some way to have his cake and eat it too? Eternity and tanning options? And where was the real Nelson? Presumably with the fangs, trapped in the body of the vamp who’d stolen his.

  “Where is Nelson now?” I asked.

  “Right here,” a voice answered. Right body, wrong brain.

  Nasty-Nelson must have come in through a doorway out of my line of sight. “I came to check on my own personal fountain of youth,” he added, appearing at the side of my autopsy table and picking up something from down to my left. I was no science geek, but I knew there was a name for the glass … thingy … he lifted to eye level. Bigger than a vial, smaller than a bread box. Beaker, that was it.

  And in it … with all the fuss, I’d expected something flashy, I guess—shiny, like with little shooting stars or maybe bubbly like champagne—but the liquid in the beaker didn’t even look like blood. They’d distilled it into something purer and more complex—blood plus drained-off energy, courtesy of Eric’s invention, like some kind of super serum. It truly looked like nothing so much as water. Pure, filtered water, sure, with a hint of soap-bubble iridescence to it, but still … maybe it sparkled in the sun.

  He held the glass to his nose and sniffed its contents like wine, closing his eyes to savor the scent. Then, without monologuing even for a second, he lifted the beaker, tilted his head back, and drank its contents down.

  I gasped, and Nelson shuddered all over, his jaw dropping with the power of it. His hand spasmed open and the beaker fell to the floor, shattering into a million pieces, but he didn’t even notice. And that was when the light show started. Tiny pinpricks of light, like dust motes caught by the sun, danced all along his flesh, giving him a glow like something out of a Biblical movie. For a second he looked like an angel fallen to earth, as pure and perfect and blissful as a man with a monobrow can manage. Then the effect faded, except that when he opened his eyes, the light was still there, shining through.

  He turned that glowing gaze on Eric, who stared at him with shock.

  “I never meant—” Eric started, then stopped as he seemed to decide that it didn’t matter. I could almost watch him deflate as the fight seeped out of him … as he gave up.

  “For it to be distilled?” Nelson finished for him. But Eric’s eyelids did no more than flicker. “Well, you see, uncle, I’ve made a few tweaks to your design. All we needed was you—and then poof, you walked right into our hands. Your machine was so limited. Energy in, energy out. Both donor and donee had to be present. Sadly, not very practical. But if you distill the energy, mix in a little blood, and bottle it like a tonic, then you’ve got control and mobility. More than that, you have a miracle drug. The ultimate addiction. Extended life, health, vitality—all for a price.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Eric bit ou
t, totally reacting to the wrong part of Nelson’s whole horrifying speech.

  “What—uncle? But you are, in a manner of speaking. Your little machines have a curious quirk … they don’t seem to work without you. But Nelson … oh, he figured it out.” It was totally eerie hearing Nelson talk about himself in the third person. “He was obsessed with my kind, you know. He wanted to prove useful, to cross over and live forever. That was why he brought us your first device. Why he brought us you.”

  “Then it’s true. You’ve swapped bodies. He’s still alive … ”

  “Oh, I’m quite sure my friends are keeping my body, ah, warm for me, and him in it. But I really think that model is obsolete, don’t you? So much more to experience in this body. The sun on my face. The joys of a steak dinner. Garlic butter sauce—oh, I’d almost forgotten the taste. So much more convenient to be an energy vampire, yes? As long as we have the bodies to drain. Lucky me, I know just the ones.”

  He kicked the glass shards from the beaker out of his way as he went for the door. “Keep up the good work,” he added, turning back to us briefly. “I’ll send in the others one by one as you recharge. In just a few hours, we should have everything we need to take on the others. All thanks to you, dear uncle.”

  Nelson disappeared, leaving behind silence except for Eric’s repeated lifting of his head only to let it fall again to the table. But he didn’t have enough height to dash his brains out, and I couldn’t imagine he was doing better than giving himself … and me … a headache.

  “Stop it!” I ordered. “We have to find a way out of this before he gets what he needs.” Because if I understood nasty-Nelson correctly, he wasn’t just in this for himself. He planned to use my essence or whatever to bolster up a whole human army to go after the vamps. If he got control of the local vampires, he could make tons of his tonic. Enough for a private army or a thriving drug trade. Horror flooded me at the thought of the highest bidders. I could easily imagine entire armies of super soldiers, eternal dictators. And to sustain the vamps, feed the supply line, he’d need to kidnap more and more human donors.