We were a sight to see.
“Sophia and the kids are supposed to be holed up in a projection room if this happened. Stick together, let’s find them and get them out quick.”
I had wondered how Sophia and her kids had gone to a movie. The human kid she could take no problem, but the half-Were and the full-Were would be an issue. They don’t look normal and don’t fit in. Hell, the full-Were looks like a scary mix of a lion and a wolf. Adding in the fact that they don’t hold the same form makes it impossible to take them outside the lycanthrope community.
Turns out one of Larson’s patients, a Were-possum named Kenny who was sweet on Sophia, worked at the theater. He snuck them in and let them watch from the projection booth. No one was any the wiser. The kids got to see a movie, and Sophia and Kenny got to spend some time together. It was a win-win situation all the way around.
Until some ancient witches decided they need blood from the kids. Then it turned into a crowded death trap.
The doors to the theater hung askew, slammed open in a wave of stampeding humanity. They weren’t designed to hold up to pressure like that and they hadn’t. Tiny shards of glass crunched under my boot heel as I crossed the threshold.
The air inside was choked with smoke, everything painted with a greenish haze. The lobby was absolutely trashed. Popcorn and paper littered the floor from wall to wall. Giant displays for movies not released yet were strewn about like they had been caught in a tornado.
A wide smear of blood started on the wall next to the ladies’ restroom. It wiped along the glassed-in movie posters for six or seven feet before turning sharply up, climbing the wall, and spilling onto the ceiling tiles.
It looked like a psychotic Jackson Pollock mural.
The concession counter was split in two, just cracked right down the center. One of the cola fountains spurted dark brown syrup into the air like arterial spray. The popcorn machine belched black smoke. Between the sticky sweet of cola and the acrid scent of burnt popcorn, it smelled like a carnival. In Hell.
In the center of the room was a child’s sneaker. It lay on its side, pink and cute, the laces sprawled on the carpet.
I tightened my hand on my gun and started moving. Signs told me that the huge children’s franchise was down the left hall in three theaters. Three choices. I crossed the lobby quickly, gun pointed forward. My eyes kept wanting to pull to the child’s shoe in the center of the floor. I forced them up, but it was a struggle.
The hallway went straight for about fifteen feet, then turned left where there were more theaters. I was familiar with the layout. Tiff and I had seen Guilty Pleasures here a month ago. We had both liked it. Hollywood had taken some liberties and picked their Jean-Claude based on star power instead of acting, but they were spot-on in their choice to play Anita. She probably didn’t agree, but I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her since it had been released.
None of the signs over the theater doors had the right movie on them. That meant the one we wanted was at the end of the hall. Around the corner. Okay. Once we got Sophia and the kids, we would go through the exit that was also at the end of the hall. If my memory was right, then we would only be about twenty-feet from the Comet. Simple.
Yeah right.
Tiff and Special Agent Heck followed me as I moved quickly down the center of the hallway, the thick carpet keeping us silent.
Time pressed in on me. The longer it took us to find Sophia and the kids, the more likely it was the witches would get there first. Our only advantage was that we knew what movie they were seeing and the witches didn’t. I had to hope their tracking spell wasn’t very precise. We didn’t have time to clear the theaters we were passing. Most of them stood closed, the doors made of wood with only a small glass window. It was surreal how quiet it was.
A woman lay in the entrance to the men’s restroom in the center of the left wall. Her arms and legs were tangled together. Blood pooled under her. It had spread and was slowly wicking into the carpet at the edge of the linoleum. Eyes open, she stared at nothing. Her head lay at a weird angle, the meat of her throat torn away. Bone glistened the same blue-white tone her skin had under the florescent lights.
We kept moving.
Sounds came around the corner—quiet, wet, smacking noises. The snuffle of something eating moist food.
My chest tightened.
I stepped around the corner, gun up and at the ready.
The hallway was littered with bodies.
Men, women, and children lay sprawled. Every one of them had their throats torn out, blood coating them like painted-on skins.
The little girl closest to me had only one shoe. One cute pink shoe. Long black hair had been pulled into pigtails held with tiny bows that matched her one pink shoe. Blood stuck one of those pigtails to her cheek, plastering it across her jaw and mouth like a gag. It soaked her sweater, pink fabric making the blood glow brightly.
Next to her lay a young man in a theater uniform. He was still holding a broom and dustpan in his dead hands. His body was bent backward, head touching heels. From there the bodies became too tangled to tell one from the other. They lay in piles, choking the floor from wall to wall.
Midway down the hall a vampire crouched over an old man. He hugged the man’s body close, hunching around it, mouth buried in the old man’s throat. Blood welled around his lips, spilling out and running away. His victim shook and convulsed underneath him.
He wasn’t alone.
Six other vampires held victims, engrossed in their meals, mouths buried like a starving pride of lions that had taken a herd of antelope. One by one, their heads snapped up. Fangs gleamed white in masks of gore. They rose, victims falling away like shed skin.
Ahriman stepped from the shadow of a theater door.
16
Light from the sign above the door cast down on the warlock. It cut shadows under sharp brows, his eyes glittering from pools of black. He smiled, teeth a white slash in a tangle of midnight beard. He looked like a skull.
“Kill them, my children. Do not let them pass. Drink their blood. Bring me their heads.” Magick pulsed behind his words. The vampires turned, making a wall of undead flesh between us and the wizard. Stepping over and on tangled corpses, they stalked down the hall toward us.
My finger squeezed thunder out of my gun as it kicked back in my hand. Three times I pulled the trigger. Three bullets smacked into the chest of the bloodsucker nearest to me, the one who had been snacking on the old man. He shuddered to a stop as twenty-four ounces of lead punched through the meat of him. They went in with a quarter-sized hole and came out his back in a spray of chunky flesh shrapnel. The vampire looked down, jaw slung open in shock.
Then his skin closed up, sealing shut in the slow blink of an eye.
Fucking regular bullets!
I needed silver bullets for vampires. Regular bullets hurt them, but they recover quickly. Too fucking quickly for it to do any good. Silver equalizes the damage and makes bullets work on them like they do on humans. I’d had Tiff change out my silver bullets to lead for the witches. Dammit! Sonnuvabitch! I should have known some shit like this would come up.
The vampire I shot convulsed from his feet to his head. It looked like a dance move. His mouth sprang open in a roar and he threw himself in the air toward me.
Time pulled in, shrinking around me. Adrenaline charged my nerves, jolting everything into sharp focus. The vampire flew at me, fingers transformed into talons, teeth like knives chewing the air. I ducked to the right, dropping down. He went over me, brushing along my shoulder. I hooked up as he went by, driving a punch into his stomach. My fist sank deep, pushing him over into a somersault. He crashed into the floor behind me, trash skittering away from him.
Right at Tiff’s feet.
He had time to roll his eyes up before she pulled the trigger on the shotgun. It bucked in her hands, fire shooting out of the cut-down barrel. The blast took the vampire in the face. His skull became a red splat. The rest of him follow
ed, exploding in a haze of dust and ash. Tiff racked the slide, spitting the spent shell out of the breech and sliding another one to the ready.
“Well, that worked,” she said.
Yep, beheading works, whether by sword or by shotgun.
But I wouldn’t be able to toss all the bloodsuckers at her feet, and that trick wouldn’t work any farther away than point-blank range. The other vamps were moving toward us, slowed down by the bodies they had to step over. They would be on us in a second, and without silver bullets we were totally and completely screwed.
I needed a plan. Like right now.
Lunging forward, my hand closed on the broom held by the dead theater worker. His head lolled around like a chicken leg pulled out of its socket, dead eyes staring up at me from between his feet. His hand fell, slack and boneless, from the broom handle.
The wooden broom handle.
With a jerk, I snapped it across my knee. The wood splintered in a long, jagged point. I tossed the bristle end away, picked up my gun, and stood. I held about four feet of cheap, semi-sharp pinewood. It was the world’s crappiest spear.
Or the world’s longest stake.
Vampires die from stakes through the hearts. It’s a holdover from their origins. Longinus, cursed by God to only be able to die at the hands of the Spear of Destiny, passed that on to his progeny. Because all vampirism comes from his original curse, it echoes with the particulars. Hates sunlight, lives off blood, and wood plus vampire heart equals dead bloodsucker.
The problem is that you can’t just stick a piece of wood through somebody’s sternum. No, it’s just not that damn easy. The breastbone is made of thick, fibrous cartilage that’s like Kevlar for the heart. Good luck getting through it with a good piece of wood, much less a busted, cheap-ass broom handle.
I had an idea.
Not a plan. I didn’t have enough ass for even a halfassed plan.
“Follow my lead.”
I didn’t have time to see if Tiff or Heck nodded before the next vampire was on me.
He was a big bastard. You don’t see a fat vampire very often, but this one was. Not just fat, but Orca fat. A pendulous belly hung low out of a shirt that was too small for him. Meaty hands reached out for me as he charged, each knuckle lost in a section of swollen finger. His arms jiggled, belly sloshing right and left with each ponderous step. Chunky blood, black in the dim lighting of the hallway, dripped off jowls, fangs sunk in a mouth made of two sets of double chins.
Time was still tight around me.
He was moving with superhuman speed, but I had all the time in the world. My gun looked huge in my fist, pointing between two swinging man udders. The first bullet punched a hole you could have stuck your thumb in and made an exit you could put your fist in. The second, third, and fourth bullets ate the edges of the entry wound, spreading it open like a blooming flower of gore. The vampire stumbled; swollen, water-balloon feet tripping over each other. I slid to the right as he dropped to his knees where I had been standing.
His back was already closing up as I twisted, driving the broom handle into the hole I had made. The pointy wood punched into the exposed heart. Dust showered me as he exploded, bouncing off the ceiling and raining down in a haze.
“Got it!” Tiff tracked up with the shotgun. “On your right!”
A vampire crouched on the wall above me, defying gravity with vampiric powers. Like a giant bloodsucking gecko, she had her feet on the ceiling and her hands on the wall, body twisted in a corkscrew. Tiny dreads of hair hung over her eyes like a veil. Greasy skin gleamed like polished teak. The blood from her victim had splashed across her face, leaving her neck clean and bare. The skin of her throat was scored with slashes that glowed faintly red. My eyes watered, the signs and sigils growing blurry as I watched.
The shotgun thundered in Tiff ’s hands. The blast hit the vampire in the center of her chest, peeling it apart. With a scream, she fell from the ceiling. Pivoting on my toe and pushing with my knee, I thrust the broom handle up, meeting her in the air. Her shrill scream cut off sharply with the quiet BAMF! Dust swirled through the air around me.
My mouth went foul with the taste of vamp ash. I didn’t get it closed in time. It tasted like someone wiped their ass with a snakeskin.
Disgusting.
Special Agent Heck’s voice cut across a split second before he fired his gun. “Left!” He was pointing down at the floor.
A vampire was skittering, crawling like a scorpion ready to sting. It was almost on me. An absurd rabbit fur coat twisted around its shoulders, dragging the ground. Peroxide hair poofed up with White Rain in a trailer-trash pompadour around a heavily made-up face. Thick trails of cheap mascara ran down acne-scarred cheeks, mixing with congealing blood. The same red symbols were carved in her scrawny neck.
Special Agent Heck’s first bullet snapped her head back, lifting her off her hands and up to her knees. The next four grouped into a three-inch square in the center of her chest.
The broom handle slid in like a key in a keyhole.
I shook the dust off my arm.
Four down. Three to go.
Tiff stepped up on my right, Heck on my left, guns out in front of them. The vampires had stopped in a line. They stood, snarling at us, gnashing fangs together in wet chomps.
The three of them had been hobos. Tattered rags of clothing hung off them. Dirt smudged wax-pallor skin. One of them had shoes that were more duct tape than shoe leather; the other two just had the duct tape.
All of them had the same symbols cut into the filthy, whisker-stubbled skin of their throats.
I pushed my gun into its holster. “You two got your part?”
Tiff ’s voice came from between clenched teeth. “Hell yeah.” Special Agent Heck just nodded sharply once up and then down.
My hands flexed on the broom handle, snapping it in two. “Let’s do this.” Pushing off, I leaped forward with a snarl of my own.
Special Agent Heck’s gun cracked off four sharp reports. The homeless vampire on the left was pushed back by the impact in one jerky step. Ducking low, I shoved up with the piece of wood in my left hand, driving with my shoulder. The greasy rags that made his shirt hid the wound. The pointy end of my makeshift stake thumped to a stop on the vampire’s breastbone.
I was right up on him. This close he smelled like someone had smeared him in shit. Choking back my gag reflex, I jerked my hand sideways, looking for the bullet holes before they closed up. The vamp’s hand clapped on the side of my neck, dirty, broken fingernails scratching my skin. It was like a bear trap clamped on my throat. He began to pull with vampiric, superhuman strength, drawing me to his open maw. His breath stank worse than he did. A rotten, spoiled meat stink that made my eyes water. Pulling back, I fought his grip, still working the stake back and forth.
Inexorably, he drew me closer. The muscles in my back screamed as I fought. Bloody spittle misted my face. The stake slipped into a bullet hole, sinking in an inch.
Twisting my stitched-up shoulder, I shoved. The stake ground through, the resistance harsh. He exploded into dust, showering me in a sticky, gritty grime that smelled like powdered manure.
I stumbled forward, through the dust cloud. The toe of my boot clipped the torso of a dead girl who lay on the floor. Brown, almond-shaped eyes stared up at me accusingly.
You should have gotten here earlier—they said.
The loud blast of Tiff ’s shotgun pulled me back to the moment. I jerked my eyes up from the dead girl to see homeless vamp number two stumble to his knees. The buckshot blast had knocked a fist-sized chunk out of his shoulder and upper chest. Dim light shone through dripping gore, the skin shredded like confetti, ribs shattered into shrapnel.
The wound wasn’t center chest. It was high and above the heart. I stabbed downward with the stake in my right hand, point sinking into shriveled lungs. I leaned over the bloodsucker, standing up on my toes, levering the stake in and down. The wooden point scraped along the inside of the rib cage, bumping dow
n until it hit the heart. The vampire’s head flew back, eyes thrown wide. The symbols on his throat blared crimson as he crumbled into ash, erasing as undead flesh turned gray and desiccated.
Behind me there was a flash of movement. I spun, stakes up and ready. The third vampire was on me, moving in a blur of supernatural speed. Fangs out, talons ready to tear flesh, he was a murderous undead missile moving almost too fast to see.
Tiff swung the shotgun in an arc. The butt of the gun cracked across the bloodsucker’s skull, driving him to the ground. Before he could scramble up, she dropped the barrel and pulled the trigger. The shotgun bucked against her shoulder, blasting a hole in the center of the vampire’s back.
Take the heart? Check.
Special Agent Heck stepped forward. His hand convulsed around the semiautomatic in his hand. Five or six bullets smashed into the vampire’s skull, pulverizing the brain in a hot, pink mess.
Take the head? Check.
The vampire became a tiny sandstorm of dust, spilling across the carpet in a puddle.
I stood up. “Good job, you two.”
Special Agent Heck nodded and replaced the clip in his gun.
Tiff smiled. “So I did alright?”
“You did. You can keep your job today.” I laughed, tension slipping out of my shoulders.
It returned with a vengeance as Ahriman screamed out a spell.
17
Magick blasted across my skin like a hot desert wind. My lip curled in disgust, the stink of putrefaction baked in the sun rushing through the hallway. Piss yellow fog rolled up around our legs.
Spinning, I found Ahriman at the end of the hall. He stood, legs spread and arms outstretched. He was screaming, a shrill, keening sound that rose and fell, breaking into syllables an alien language.
The sound of it set my teeth on edge, grinding them together. Pain shot up my jaw and across the back of my head.
Blood and Magick Page 7