by Ian Hall
“Yes, quite a lot.”
“That’s good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah, it means the bullet probably went right through. It’s amazing what you learn off television.”
“We have to get you to a doctor.” She gave me an anxious look.
“Turn right, onto the highway,” I gasped. “We have to deal with Mandy first. She can’t wake up here, she’d be traumatized.”
“She’s dead, Lyman!” Mary-Christine broke. “She’s a fucking vampire! You’re alive, she’s doubly dead right now. We have to get you to a hospital.”
Man, I blazed with anger, I hadn’t taken my meds this morning, just in case I needed the vampire aroma around me, and I felt pissed off with Mary-Christine’s disregarding Mandy.
“Just do as I fucking tell you, Mary-Christine Muscat. Take us home!”
Well, seems my little chickadee did exactly that. I saw some of the country pass, but not much. My shoulder hurt like hell, and I did little but stare at the road, moan a fair bit, and look back at the body, crumpled ungraciously behind me.
After one of my sleeps, I awoke to the darkness of my garage.
Mary-Christine was gone from her seat, but Mandy still lay behind me. I sat for a while as my shoulder throbbed. I touched the front of my fleece; blood, and quite a bit of it.
“Mary-Christine!” I shouted, but there was no reply, and no sound of movement.
I tried her phone, but it went straight to voicemail. I tried a few times, but nothing. Then I thought of my other partner-in-crime.
“Reynolds.”
“Yes, Lyman? What can I do for you?”
“Eh, it’s a delicate problem.”
I could hear him get close to the microphone. “No problem is too big, Lyman. What’s up?”
“Oh, just the usual Monday stuff; I got shot, and I have a body to deal with.”
“Holy fuck. Where are you?”
“At home, in my garage.”
“I’ll be around in five minutes.”
It felt like only seconds later, but when I heard the car outside, I opened the garage door with my key fob. Once he was inside, I closed it again.
He was quickly at my open car door. “Where are you hit?” his eyes roamed my body. “Just the shoulder?”
I nodded, and he leant inside to pull me out. Then he must have seen Mandy’s body. “Oh, fuck. This has been a busy day.”
I put my good arm over his shoulder, and he dragged me from the car, and into the foyer of the house.
“Just lean me here, I’ll be fine.” But of course, he ignored me completely and set me down in the nearest chair, the one close to the door. “You have to get Mandy.”
“I have to look at your wound first.”
“No. Get Mandy out of the car!”
He visibly paled at my tone. If it hadn’t been for the situation, I would have felt good about my badass-ness. “Okay. Where do I put her?”
I pointed to the stairs. “Guest bedroom for now, I’ll work out the rest later.”
I’ll give Reynolds his due, he didn’t flinch. He just turned and I heard lots of moans from the garage. All Reynolds.
He appeared in the doorway.
He held Mandy like a protective father holding a child. Her face lax and lifeless, but her blonde hair fell about her shoulders in a really attractive way.
I opened my mouth to say something poignant, when the front door opened, and Dave Muscat walked right inside, followed by Marc Brennan, the doctor from Unicorps.
We all froze for a good long moment, our eyes darting from one person in the frozen diorama to the other. Then Dave pointed to Reynolds. “That’s Mandy Cross,” he said, and my heart faltered and seemed to stop beating. He walked up to her, pushing the last strands of blonde hair from her face. “That’s vampire Mandy Fucking Cross.”
The shit had undoubtedly hit the fan, and our plan crumbled as I lapsed into unconsciousness.
It was about an hour later that Dave gave me information necessary to place the final piece into the puzzle.
On arriving at my house with two bodies, Mary-Christine had run around to her parents’ house. Telling her mother I needed a doctor; that I’d been shot, she then went and collapsed, fainting, hitting her head hard on a table as she did so.
Roni, of course, phoned Dave, and he, rightly, surmised that it would not be a situation for the authorities, grabbed the Unicorps doctor, and came straight over.
“So we’re in separate beds, together,” I managed a grin, looking around my bedroom. Dave stood over me, a wry look on his face.
“Yes, you are. And you’ve managed to get yourselves into trouble, but turned up a valuable scalp. I’m full of questions, but the foremost of all, is who’s this?” He turned to Reynolds, who stood in the doorframe.
“Dave Muscat, meet Frank Reynolds. He’s a private investigator, and responsible for de-bugging my house, and removing all the cameras and trackers your guys installed.”
For the first time, I saw Dave lose his air of confidence. He nodded to Reynolds, who returned it with a sharp, cocky salute.
“He’s not responsible for the car crash that killed my guy, is he?” Dave asked.
“No.” I leant up from the pillows, and the look of remorse on Dave Muscat’s face seemed worth the wince of pain from my shoulder. “You’re responsible for that one, Dave. You shouldn’t have had me followed. I’m on your side; always have been.”
Again, the strength in the room flowed to me, and he looked vulnerable.
“Where’s Mandy?” I asked.
“She’s being taken care of right now.” Dave flashed me a warning look, then glanced at Reynolds.
My heart leapt, and I felt the vampire pressure build. They had taken Mandy. But of course, I had just claimed imperiously to be on Muscat’s side. I had passed the guilt trip to Dave, and now I had to swallow it myself.
I lay back on the pillow and considered the growing problem.
Through no one’s fault but our own lack of planning, we had bungled the vampire snatch, and we now had Mandy Cross on the vampire’s slab. I lay in bed, shot, and I had five days to get well, and get myself to Atlanta to rescue Mandy, and kill Amos.
Dave muttered something about going to see his daughter, and left.
My blood coursed through my veins. I could feel it pumping in every pulse.
Then Reynolds coughed politely.
“Sorry,” I said, slightly embarrassed at forgetting him.
“No need.” He walked into the room and stood by the bed. “But if you need my help, you’ll have to fill me in with a few details; maybe not all, but there’s nothing going to get me killed quicker than not having the right information.”
I looked into his eyes, and hoped he wasn’t a policeman or a traitor, or something else I shouldn’t trust. Then I had a revelation. I motioned him closer.
“Come closer.” I grabbed him by the neck and sniffed his sweat glands. I could feel him push against me, but I held him tight. “Can I trust you, Frank?”
“Yeah, totally.”
My lack of meds were performing two duties; keeping me badass, and allowing me to smell any fear from him. “If we find out you’re double-crossing us, or that you’re a police plant, you will be killed.”
“I’m clean.”
I let him go, and he stood and shook his head. “You’ve got a bloody good grip for a kid who’s just taken a bullet.”
“You’re on the payroll, Frank Reynolds, as of two hours ago.”
“I kind of assumed that.”
“Good. Go back to the car. There should be two automatics, and two funny-looking guns, ammo, all that stuff. And cases for all. Bring them up here. We need to clean them ready for sending by FedEx.”
Mary-Christine visited me that evening. Wow, she had a huge bandage on her forehead, and for the first time since the attempted snatch, my thoughts were taken away from Mandy’s plight.
She looked very sheepish, and came right over to
me and cried onto my stomach.
“Hey, hey. What’s the matter?”
“I screwed it up totally.”
I looked at her, puzzled. “Hey, we all screwed up.”
“No!” she snapped. “If it wasn’t for me flipping fainting, we could have kept Mandy out of this.”
I ran my hand through her hair, smiling. “And if it hadn’t been for my plan in the first place. And if it hadn’t been for Mandy’s screwing up her part. Look, what’s over, is over.”
“But Mandy!”
“Look, I’ve had a long think on the whole plan. I’m changing things a bit, but we go ahead as planned.”
“What?” she looked incredulous. “You’re still going ahead? That’s crazy.”
“Of course! If I can get into the room, we’ll still get Amos. That’s the biggest thing; killing Amos Blanche. I’d sacrifice myself to get him, and I know that Mandy Cross would lay her life down to get that bastard. I just know it.”
“But to break in on your own?”
“Just a small change in plans. We just have to do a little more in that execution room than we’d planned. We have to kill Amos and rescue Mandy.”
Mary-Christine smiled, shaking her head. “Well, since you put it like that, what’s going to go wrong!”
“Plus, I have an ace in the hole; Frank Reynolds.”
“The private investigator?”
“Yup, he got me and Mandy out of the car. He’s out right now, cleaning the inside of the car. He’s going with me to Atlanta.”
She wore her incredulous look again. “What? What did you tell him?”
“A lot. He took the vampire thing real easily. He’s not stupid; he’s been watching the town for a while, knowing that something wasn’t right. He even knew one of the vampire senior’s family. So, since he now knows they were murdered, he’s got a personal interest. Plus, he’s experienced at breaking into buildings. Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
“But your shoulder?” Concern swept across her face.
“I’ll be fine.”
Then she tilted her head slightly, and looked at me. “You’re off your meds, aren’t you?”
I took a deep breath, ready for her outpouring. “I think I’ll heal quicker.”
“You’re giving up to the vampire side.”
God, it sounded like a line from Star Wars, but I had to grin. “I know what I’m doing, Mary-Christine. What have you told your dad about Mandy?” I hoped the change of subject would be my savior.
“Oh, that.” She looked at me and sighed. “A chance meeting, upstate north of Flagstaff. We didn’t have any coagulant pistols with us, so I just shot her. She got one back at us, obviously you got hit, and I headed back here.”
“Sounds good enough,” I smiled at her. “You kept it uncomplicated, that’s what matters.”
She leant over and kissed me. Man that felt good. With her tongue in my mouth, I got a boner right away. We kissed for ages, then she did a very strange thing. She rubbed him, right on the outside of my jeans. Rubbed it up and down. Then she held her hand to her face, but this time she grinned. “Oops, silly me. Look what I just did.”
“Yeah, really.”
She stood up giggling. “And I know that I did that by myself! No vampire pheromones.”
I grinned at her fake embarrassment. “Just go to your dad and claim Mandy’s takedown as yours. You’ve got five days to convince him that you want in at the execution. That’s now the biggest obstacle to the whole plan.”
I often wondered what Mandy was going through, but every time her awful situation insidiously slipped into my mind, I chased it away with busy thoughts. On Tuesday evening, Mary-Christine got her dad’s entry card, and Reynolds disappeared for three hours, returning with our copies. The card got replaced in Dave’s wallet before he woke up
With my meds kept purposefully low, my shoulder healed quickly. By Wednesday, I had my arm out of a sling, and the holes were completely closed. My vampire blood worked wonders.
Reynolds proved the rock I’d hoped he would be. Through him, the guns were sent to Atlanta, and would be ready on the other side. Flights were booked; Friday morning, nine-ten a.m. Hotel booked; the nearest one to the Unicorps facility. Hire car taken care of.
We kept the truth of my ‘miraculous’ healing to ourselves. We needed Dave to have no earthly idea that I lay anywhere else than back home in Gregor, Arizona.
So, since I was obviously ‘too sick’ to ask to the execution, plans for the Muscats to leave were made without me.
Despite the tension between the families, and the worry about Mandy, we spent most of the time in comparative calm; plans came effortlessly together, rather than floundered.
I slipped out of the back door in the darkness of Friday morning, and crossed a couple of neighbors’ gardens before walking out onto the street and into Frank Reynolds’s van.
We were off to Atlanta.
I ran, lugging something heavy, red dirt flying into my eyes, popping noises in the air. Yelling.
Then this strange sensation like I’d been wearing a suit of flesh and bone; it got unzipped and just fell away, leaving me naked. Nothing else after that.
Until the darkness came. The darkness was a different kind of suit. It fell all over me; I could feel it pressing up against both my shoulders, the top of my head and the bottom of my feet. As I started to move my lungs again, they’d push the air out but the darkness would send it back to me. I suffocated on my own breath.
Slowly I became aware of the movement. Little waves at first, like being afloat on top a blow-up raft. Every once in a while the waves would just stop, but still this constant vibration underneath me. Just like the darkness, it seemed everywhere.
Even that went away and I wondered if I’d just died again. Loud, clanging noises told me I hadn’t. A huge crash shook the darkness; if I hadn’t been squeezed in so tight, I might have rolled right off the edge of the universe.
Then pounding. Far away at first. Getting closer. Hard-heeled boots stomping up a metal slide. Followed by the sensation of being levitated. The darkness on the move again; but this time, not so smoothly. No quiet vibration this time. A lunging, jerky motion that I felt deep in the pit of my stomach.
I put my hands up to keep from drifting up any further. My palms felt the rough, wooden sky as jagged splinters carved through my flesh.
I shimmied and squirmed against the confining nothingness but got held in place by barriers I couldn’t see. This weird, shrilling cry filled up the space between me and the lid of my coffin. It took a while before I realized I listened to my own screaming.
Sour air and that piercing call took shape of the box around me, pinning me in as sure as any wooden crate. Then I felt myself lowered again and felt myself being rolled along like some fucking package in a warehouse.
I held my breath, trying not to suck in any more of my own CO2. My efforts were useless; the oxygen was all but depleted and my head fogged. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed.
Then the voices seeped in from the wooden walls.
“Holy shit! She’s awake!”
“She must have come-to on the truck…”
“Ready the coagulant, boys. This is gonna get ugly, fast.”
More footsteps. An ugly click. Sterile, proficient.
“Okay. Do it and get out of the way, quick as you can.”
More rumbling. Jerking. Grunts and heavy breathing. Those bastards were taking up all my fucking air…
Then the black sky started to lift. Shards of stabbing light penetrated the darkness in painful slices. Followed by a rush of cold oxygen.
I swallowed a mouthful and my lungs expanded like two pissed off puffer fish. Coughing, sputtering and blind, I shot up and screamed something even I couldn’t understand into the room. More screams responded back to me. No words; just sheer panic.
Saliva filled my mouth and my fangs dripped for the taste of blood. My hands found the one closest to me. His crowbar found my
skull.
Crack.
More light. More screaming. I felt my nails score an inch deep trench through that son-of-a-bitch’s throat. The smell of his blood splatting my face assaulted my gut and I wrenched violently.
Just as I realized where I was and who my captives were, a sharp stab met me square in the back. Then another in my leg.
Again the darkness came.
Mandy on the Chopping Block
It took seconds to compare the usual first-class seating with our cheap economy ones. But the three hours were passed watching a movie on my pc, and the cramped seating bothered Frank’s larger frame more than mine. The hire car was ready for us at the airport, and the guns at the FedEx depot. We were obviously real early, so we had a late lunch/early dinner, and settled down in the hotel room, computers out, going through plans, routes, doors, possible security guards.
“Can we go for a look?” Reynolds asked.
“You mean, right now?”
“Yeah, why not? It’ll let me see, give me an idea what we’re getting into.”
I agreed, I mean, let’s face it, I’d been there a few times, and I knew what to expect. When we arrived, most of the staff had already gone home, and I drove past the main Unicorps building, and down to the smaller Transperian offices. There were still a couple of cars in the parking lot, and I just pulled up next to one of them.
I had to steady my nerves, I had my meds at the lowest level for a while, and I felt incredibly nervous. I inched my window down. Outside it was all pretty quiet. Even the noise of traffic sounded far away. A small delivery truck arrived at the front door and parked less than thirty yards from us. As the driver turned off his engine, the interior light came on, and to my shock, I saw Amos, large as life.
I placed my hand on Reynolds’s chest. “Shh. That’s the enemy.” I strained my ears to listen to the conversation.
“You place the canisters in the observation lounge and prime them. It should take you no longer than fifteen minutes.” Amos’s voice drifted across the parking lot. I had little time to think, and even less to plan. Luckily the guns were still in the FedEx box in the backseat.