I leaned back again, waving at Abby to be quiet. Her twenty-something college student idealist feminist sensibilities had been offended, so I looked up at her. “It’s got nothing to do with you being a girl, sweetheart. It’s more about the fact that you were a meal. Krysta turned you, and the Prof here was supposed to find you and make you part of his little posse.”
“Exactly, Mr. Black. Perhaps you aren’t as much an idiot as you appear,” Wideham said, smiling as he played with Emily’s hair.
“I’m not enough of an idiot to keep putting my hands on Greg’s sister with both of us in the room, that’s for sure.”
His hand froze, and his eyes flicked over to Greg. Greg hadn’t moved, but that was all the distraction I needed.
I kicked the coffee table up into the air, and yelled, “Grab her!” to King.
The big werewolf was almost vamp-fast, and had been waiting for my signal. He snatched Emily up and bolted for the door. A young vampire came in from the hallway to intercept him and found himself suddenly with a face full of lead courtesy of Sabrina and her AR-15. The last thing he saw was a .223 round punching through his eyeball. King got Emily out of the room and didn’t stop moving as Greg, Abby and I encircled the older vamp.
“Very well played, children. But now it’s time for the grown-ups to be in charge again. So sleep.”
I felt the mojo in his words roll over me, and I watched Sabrina sag bonelessly to the floor. Abby fought it, but she was no match for the older vampire’s mind. The couple of Wideham’s minions that had managed to regain their feet went out as well, and Greg and I were left alone with the professor-turned-vampire.
Chapter 25
“Should we do this the easy way,” I asked Greg, “or the hard way?”
“I vote the hard way,” my partner said, as he cracked his knuckles.
I drew the faerie sword and passed it over to him. He had a lot more Lord of the Rings fetish than I did. I just wanted to punch the bad guy’s heart out through his spine, but I figured Greg wanted to do things with a little more flair.
“Boys, do you really think you can match my power, my intellect, my experience?” Wideham was trying to maneuver us so we had our backs to the shattered window, but I didn’t budge. Greg didn’t either, and that was a lot of bulk to move.
“Nope,” I said. “But I think we’ve got you crushed on witty banter and dashing good looks.”
I launched myself at the vampire, but he dodged easily. Of course, when he did, he dodged right into Greg’s meaty fist. I heard a sound like a lot of bubblewrap popping all at once.
I winced. “And the good-looks gulf just gets wider. I’m pretty sure that’s the sound of a crushed nose.”
The Professor let out a snarl and dove for me, almost taking flight in his rage. I easily sidestepped, then caught one arm as he went past. It wasn’t exactly judo, more the product of watching a lot of Saturday afternoon Bruce Lee movies, but it was enough to toss him into a wall. More drywall dust filled the room, and Wideham pulled himself out of the shattered wall. He turned to us, holding up both hands in a placating gesture.
“Now, boys, why can’t we be friends? You can join my fraternity, live in our house with us. I hear you need a place to live. We could hunt together, pick up college girls together. Dine together.” I heard a creak of the ruined floor and dropped straight down, just barely avoiding the machete swinging at my throat from behind. Greg wasn’t as quick, but he didn’t have to be. The difference in our heights once again proved his salvation, as the blade whistled right over his head and buried itself into a wall.
I stood up and found myself face-to-face with maybe the single largest vampire I had ever seen. Six foot ten if he was an inch, the bearded blond behemoth looked every bit of a Thor stunt double, only with fangs and über-white skin. He looked down at me, something that almost never happened to me, and grinned.
That was twice in one week I’d been the short guy in a fight, and I didn’t like it one bit. I smiled a sickly smile, and mumbled, “Nice giant, don’t eat the skinny one.”
Thor punched me in the gut, and I folded like an origami swan. I heard a couple of floating ribs crack and dropped to one knee. Thor smiled and reared back to kick me in the face. That’s when Sabrina came up from behind the sofa with her rifle and put five rounds in the big vampire’s back. Thor howled in pain and whirled on my grinning girlfriend.
“How?” I croaked.
“I don’t mojo, remember?”
She emptied her clip into the big vampire, but he never stopped. Thor charged, and Sabrina swung the rifle like a bat. She connected with one forearm, but Thor backhanded her into Dreamland.
I came to my feet with a pistol in each hand and a lopsided grin on my face. “That was my girlfriend, asshole,” I said.
Thor just looked at me and laughed as he pulled a shotgun out of the back of his pants. Seriously, the dude had a sawed-off shotgun in the waistband of his pants as if it were a .38. He pointed it at my face, and said, “You’re right, dipshit. She was your girlfriend. Now she’s my next snack.” He flashed a vicious grin and pulled the trigger.
The shotgun boomed loud in the small apartment, and buckshot blew out even more glass, but I was out of the way long before Thor pulled the trigger. I was fast—crazy fast. I tapped the behemoth on the shoulder, and when he turned around, there was a 9mm pistol pressed against each cheekbone.
“Now put the gun down, and jump out the window, or I’m repainting this place in Giant Brain Gray.”
Thor did as I told him, and I heard a sickening crash from below as he landed on a vehicle and blew every piece of glass out of the frames.
I turned to where Wideham stood in the middle of the room. He hadn’t budged through my whole encounter with his bruiser, just stood there watching. Greg had a gun in his non-sword hand, but something told me he wasn’t going to have any more luck shooting the Professor than Thor had shooting me.
“Well played, gentlemen, well played,” Wideham said, stepping forward with a smile.
Greg pulled back the hammer on his pistol, but then the older vampire’s hand blurred, and the gun simply wasn’t there anymore. I heard another small crash outside, and then heard the gun go off down in the parking lot.
“I thought I was fast,” I said, looking at the master vamp with new respect.
“You are, for one so young. But I have been haunting institutions of higher learning since I entered Cambridge with little Francis Bacon. I have, as you say, learned a thing or two along the way. And one of those things is that gentlemen, true men of letters, never sully their hands in a confrontation with the lesser classes.”
With that, he bolted for the open door, only to find Greg standing there. I never even saw my partner move, he was just there. Wideham looked at Greg’s stony face, then at the golden sword and stepped backward into the room. He turned to make a dash for the open window, but I blocked his escape.
“I don’t want to fight you boys. It’s dreadfully uncivilized.” The Professor held up his hands as his eyes scanned the room for another way out.
Greg tested the edge of Milandra’s sword on his thumb, licking the thin line of blood that appeared. I never understood how that sword stayed so sharp. I only ever used it in sparring, but it never got dull. That might be a very good thing before the night was over.
“I think you’re right, Professor. Somebody’s going to get hurt.” Greg’s eyes were flat, a slight tremor in his hands the only hint at the rage he fought to hold back.
The old vampire looked over at me, pleading. “Mr. Black, please restrain your friend. There is no need for further violence, is there? I can leave town, never return. Find a new place to hunt, a new university in which to lecture. I give you my word I shall never return to Charlotte.”
“You’re right,” Greg said, “You won’t.” And in a blinding lunge, he thrust the sword through Wideham’s heart.
The sword wasn’t wood or silver, but it seemed to have the desired effect anyway.
The blade slid out the back of the elder vampire’s chest, and then the whole thing started to glow with a bright purple light. The Professor’s body glowed in turn, and the same purple light came flooding out of his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. In a matter of seconds, his entire body was consumed with blinding lavender light, and then, quicker than a blink, the light was gone.
And so was Dr. Wideham. There was a small pile of clothing covered in purple dust on the floor where he had stood, and the sword in Greg’s hand was just an ordinary, if very sharp and ridiculously magical, blade again.
I reached out carefully, took the sword from him and slid it back into the sheath on my hip. He looked at the pile of dust on the floor, raised a foot and kicked it all over the rug. “Nobody messes with my baby sister.”
Then he turned and walked slowly toward the door. I stood there like a moron watching him go, then shook myself and helped get Sabrina and Abby awake.
“Come on,” I said to Sabrina. “We should get out of here before the police show up.”
“The police are the least of your worries, Mr. Black,” a familiar voice said from the hallway.
The lack of a door was really starting to get on my nerves. I looked up to see the Master of the City standing in the doorway. Greg backed up a lot faster than he’d been walking forward, but at least he didn’t run away.
“People have got to quit calling me that. It makes me think my dad has shown up all of a sudden, and that would not be cool.” I tried to look a lot less terrified than I actually was. I took a step in front of Sabrina, and Greg motioned for Abby to get behind him.
“I apologize for any respect I may have granted you then, James. Now, what in the world are we to do about you? This makes twice in one evening where I have been forced to mesmerize an entire restaurant full of patrons. I simply cannot allow this type of behavior to continue.” He stepped into the room and surveyed the damage. “And where shall I send the bill for this cleaning? I understand you are between addresses at the moment.”
It wasn’t my finest moment. I should have kept my mouth shut in front of the vampire who’d already beaten me to a pulp once that week.
But I wasn’t known for my discretion. I crossed my arms and said, “We would have been done with this hours ago if you’d bothered to tell us that this douche-rocket was here in your building, instead of making us run all over town looking for him. Then we would only have inconvenienced you for one meal, not two.”
Tiram looked up at me, eyes wide. He obviously wasn’t accustomed to being called out, at least not by anything that wanted to keep living. We stood there, almost nose to chin for the longest few seconds in recent memory, then he did the last thing I expected.
He laughed. The Master of the City threw back his head and laughed as if I’d just told the funniest joke since Bill Cosby retired from stand-up.
“Well said, James, well said. You are correct, of course. Had I not been protecting the ‘douche-rocket,’ as you so eloquently put it, we would not be in this predicament now. But I don’t believe that is the point.”
“You’re damn right that’s not the point, you pointy-toothed son of a bitch,” Sabrina said. She pushed her way past me and got right up in the Master’s face. She looked up at the boss vampire with a set jaw and gleam in her eye that said she really, really wanted to stake something.
“Have I done something to offend you, Detective?” Tiram said with a raised eyebrow.
“You mean other than aid and abet a kidnapping, harbor a fugitive and assist in the assault of a CMPD detective? I’m sure I can come up with something else, but that sounds like a good start to me. Now why don’t you come clean about what you really wanted out of this mess and quit yanking our chains before I haul your ass five blocks south and stick you in an east-facing cell?”
Tiram glared at Sabrina, then looked back at me. “Can’t you keep your human under control?”
“I’m not even stupid enough to try, pal. She carries a gun and a stake, and knows how to use them both.” I held up both hands and tried not to smile at Tiram’s discomfort.
“And he knows exactly where I’d shove that stake if he or anybody else ever tried to control me, asshole. Now spill. What was this all about?”
I put a hand on Sabrina’s shoulder. “Stand down, Wyatt Earp. It was all a play to get us to kill Wideham. Or Wideham to kill us. I don’t know which, and I really don’t think the Master here really cared one way or the other.”
“Well said, James. You’re absolutely correct. I had no real preference which group survived this encounter, as long as one of you did not.”
“Why?” Sabrina asked.
She looked around the room and I could see the sheer carnage start to sink in. There was blood thicker than the paint in some places, and the carpeting was so sodden it squished under our feet. There were pieces of vampire everywhere, and the stink of blood was enough to make a slaughterhouse smell like a rose garden.
“Because now we can’t band together to overthrow him,” I said, looking at Tiram.
He nodded. “Wideham’s group was stupid, but numerous. You are few in number, but you have amassed some very powerful allies in a short period of time and have proven resourceful. I did not want you to join forces with Wideham against me. I could easily slaughter one of you, but not both.”
“And now, with Wideham turned to so much crud on the carpet, Tiram’s power base is solid again. Because we don’t want to run things, and even if we did, we couldn’t take him without a lot of help,” I said.
“And thus status quo is restored,” Tiram said with a little bow.
Sabrina looked at the Master and smiled. “Fair enough. Stalemate. We aren’t strong enough to beat you in a fight, and you don’t have enough muscle to kill us off, not to mention that there’s a lot of interest from local authorities when a police officer is killed. But remember one thing, Master. These guys do have friends with a lot of juice in this town. And I’m one of them. So you screw with them, and I’ll hurt you in ways you can’t even imagine.”
“I have a very vivid imagination, Detective.” Tiram looked at her with a leer.
I grabbed the front of his shirt and picked him up. “You ever look at her again, and I will rip your head off and drink you dry from the inside out. Do you understand me?”
Tiram nodded, a little smirk playing across his face. “You can try, James. You can try.”
I saw a shadow flicker across his eyes, and I flashed back to a couple of possessed faeries I’d killed recently. I started to have a sneaking suspicion that Tiram might have a hitchhiker in his psyche, but I wasn’t going to go after him tonight. I was tired, hungry and not at all sure I could beat him on my best day. I set him down, deciding to find a better day to take on the Master of the City.
“I am so glad we have reached a peaceful conclusion. But what shall we do about all of this?” He gestured to the mess, including the puddles of dissolving vampire strewn around the apartment.
“Call a cleanup crew and mojo your way out of the bill?” I suggested with a shrug.
Tiram cocked his head to the side and laughed again. “Well, of course. But I was referring to them.” He pointed more specifically to the vampires we didn’t kill. There were a good five or six of them in various states of disrepair, but they’d all heal with enough blood and time out of the sun.
“I don’t really care. We didn’t kill them, but that’s as far ahead as we thought. There were other things we had to take care of, if you know what I mean.” I waved a hand at Sabrina, and the Master nodded.
“Well, I am short on kitchen help, and they should be able to wash a dish if nothing else. All of you!” He clapped his hands, and the recuperating vamps all came to attention, or at least managed to stand. “Go downstairs and hide in the walk-in freezer. It has a bolt on the inside of the door, and a five-gallon bucket of blood labeled ‘pig testicles’ on the top shelf. Try not to spill too much.”
The survivors made their shuffling way out o
f the apartment, giving Greg and me wide berth as they did. I didn’t blame them. After all, we had kind of shot them just about an hour before.
“Okay, then,” I said, “What are we all waiting for? Let’s go home. Maybe get a little sleep.”
“And a shower,” Sabrina said, looking at the brains and blood splattered all over her clothes.
“Need help washing your back?” I asked.
She glared at me, and I gave her my best innocent smile, which was hampered by the fact that my fangs were still extended. Hey, I was hungry. Really.
“As soon as I do, Jimmy, you’ll be the first to know.” She smiled a little at me as we all walked down the hall to the elevator.
Chapter 26
It was a little surreal riding in an elevator with the Master of the City. This was the same guy who’d stood by as Krysta tossed my best friend off a roof, the same guy who hid the Professor from us while Sabrina was his captive. Every instinct in my body told me I needed to kill him. Well, every instinct except the ones that were screaming to run away as fast as my size elevens would carry me.
For his part, Tiram just stood in the elevator like anyone else, watching the numbers change and whistling a little tune.
“So, how did you become the Master of the City?” I asked in a feeble attempt at small talk.
“I killed my predecessor,” Tiram said simply.
Greg shot me a look that said, Do not piss off the badass super-vamp.
I didn’t take the hint. “Why? Just to run Charlotte? Or did he do something to you?”
“He was the Master. I wanted to be. It was impossible for me to become Master while he yet lived, so I solved the problem. And now, gentlemen, I bid you adieu.” He bowed gracefully to Sabrina as the doors slid open behind him. “Detective,” he said, making a grand gesture for her to exit the elevator. She ignored him and pushed her way out of the elevator.
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