The Bite Before Christmas

by Heidi Betts

  So either this guy hadn’t yet come across another vamp who’d been around the block a few thousand more times than he had…or he was just a plain old run-of-the-mill flaming asshole.

  Keeping all of that in mind, she forced herself to relax and feign complete and total innocence.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, letting her voice go thin and shaky. “I didn’t mean to trespass, but I’ve been visiting my mother, who lives down the street, and her cat got out. She’s really upset about finding the poor thing, so I’ve been going around the neighborhood, looking for it, and I thought it might have gotten in here somehow.”

  Given the broken windows, abandoned appearance, and odor of cat pee permeating the house, it was entirely plausible. Although she had no doubt that any small domestic animal who made the mistake of wandering into this place likely wouldn’t last very long before becoming a four-legged appetizer. Rogue vamps like this weren’t exactly known for their discernment when it came to feeding patterns.

  “Have you seen him?” she asked, twisting slightly in an effort to break the vamp’s hold—but not struggling, not acting as though it was anything but a normal response to wanting to face the person you were talking to.

  She was careful, however, not to make actual eye contact with the six-foot-four fangster. Not all vampires had the power to hypnotize humans; it was a trait that took some time to master, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  Rather than grabbing her again or throwing her through the nearest window, the tall, cocky vampire’s mouth widened into a smirk. Closed lips, no sign of fangs. He was playing it smooth. But then, he didn’t know that she already knew what he was and was more than familiar—intimately familiar—with his kind.

  “Sorry, sweet thang,” he oozed in a voice that ran down her spine like Tabasco sauce. “I haven’t seen your pussy. Yet.”

  Oh, yeah. A Mensa member with a witty-slash-creepy double entendre comeback. It was all she could do not to roll her eyes and knee him in the marbles.

  Vampires might have superpowers, but none of them were located in the family stones. One well-placed kick and she could have this guy on the floor, squealing like a sissy. And it was tempting, very, very tempting.

  Pretending she didn’t catch his subtle threat, she asked, “Would you mind if I looked around a bit? Momma’s cat is kind of skittish, and I’m afraid he might be hiding in a closet or the basement or something.”

  As soon as she mentioned the basement, she knew she had him. His tall frame relaxed into an overconfident, I’ve-got-her-now stance.

  One corner of his mouth lifted even higher. “Yeah, sure, sweet thang. Make yourself at home.”

  He stayed where he was, waiting, letting her take the lead, and then following a few feet behind. She moved back down the hall and checked the other rooms downstairs first, then headed carefully up the stairs to the second floor.

  She was half afraid of falling through the rotting boards, straight to the basement far below. Which was her true destination, anyway, but she worried that if she made a beeline for Ian, the gang leader might get suspicious.

  So she took her time, pretending to be nothing more than a helpless young woman in search of her mother’s runaway feline. She looked in closets, behind window drapes, under broken, rodent-infested pieces of furniture, all the while calling for the imaginary pet: Fluffy.

  If the situation hadn’t been so dire, she would have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. But it was a necessary façade. And she could only hope that the minutes she wasted wandering around was actually buying Ian some much needed time to rest and recover from whatever this group of vampires had already put him through.

  Because she’d bet her badge and every one of her memories of being immortal that Mr. Big Bad Leader here gave his minions an order not to do another thing with Ian until he got back. He was too arrogant not to want to be present and in control, taking an active role in the torturing of an innocent human, bound and gagged and helpless.

  A flare of anger shot through her as they trailed back downstairs. Oh, yeah, they were going to pay for that. All of it.

  And not just what they’d done to Ian—though that was bad enough—but for everything she was sure they’d done to countless other victims over the years. All she needed was a nice, flaming ball of sunshine that would turn them into nothing more than a meal for the nearest ShopVac.

  She glanced toward one of the broken-out windows, wondering how many more hours they had to go before dawn. Too many, she was afraid. And, silly her, she’d forgotten to pack her blowtorch.

  Just as she’d hoped he would, when they returned to the main floor, Leader of the Pricks held up a hand and pointed her toward the back of the house. “The basement’s this way.”

  Said the spider to the fly. Never mind his blatant disregard for the kitchen or anything else that lay beyond the basement entrance where a cat might be hiding out, he wanted her downstairs as soon as possible.

  Since that’s what she wanted, too, she let him usher her through the open door and down a narrow set of rickety steps. Only whatever light they already had burning down there cast any illumination on the stairs and kept her from tripping, falling, and breaking her neck before the Break-dancer Boys got the chance to do it for her.

  She knew Thriller-boy’s letting her wander around on her own wasn’t going to last, but it still came as a surprise when he cracked her in the middle of her back with the flat of his hand hard enough to send her flying through an open, door-less doorway. The air flew from her lungs as she stumbled forward, tripped into Ian’s slumped form, and sent them both crashing to the ground with a splintering creak of wood and a heavy thump of bodies.

  Excellent. Though the assault did catch her slightly off guard, she wasn’t quite as dazed as she let on, and couldn’t have planned the fall better if she’d choreographed it herself. Keeping her head down, she gave it a small shake and made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a moan as though she was stunned, confused, maybe even injured.

  She was down on the earthen floor—at least she thought it was earthen. Either that or the dirt was so thick and hard packed that it might as well have been. While she was draped half over a nearly unconscious Ian, she did her best to loosen his bonds. The nice thing about bullies was that their muscles were usually bigger than their brains, and this group of vamps was no exception.

  Because The Four Stooges were so tough, intimidating, and self-assured, the ropes they’d used on Ian were mostly for show. They were wound tight around his wrists and ankles, but the knots were something a four-year-old could undo. And she was no four-year-old.

  Then, as she continued to pretend her equilibrium was off, she made a point of using the chair, specifically the chair’s legs—to push herself up, using all of her weight until she heard a nice, satisfying crack. Two of the legs broke off, sending her back down to the ground.

  She groaned, playing her part to the hilt. And she must have been doing a good job because the vampires laughed like hyenas, enjoying her apparent weakness and the prospect of having a new victim to toy with until dawn.

  Before trying to push herself up again, she leaned close to Ian’s face. She knew he was still breathing, and she even thought he was awake, just out of it from the abuse he’d suffered.

  “Can you hear me?” she whispered.

  With his mouth still covered by a strip of tape, he blew a heavy breath out through his nose and gave a low groan. She took it as a yes.

  “Good. Get ready. As soon as I can get the jump on these guys, we’re going to make a run for it.”

  She barely got the words out before a big hand grabbed her by the back of the head, tangling in her hair and yanking her to her feet. But hopefully Ian had heard her. And hopefully he would have enough strength left to move under his own steam when the time came, because she didn’t think she could kill, hurt, or distract four vamps and carry Ian out of this basement fireman-style.

  Climbing to her feet, doing her bes
t to keep Alpha Dick from scalping her, she was careful not to let him see the chair legs she was still holding, one in each hand. A.k.a. wooden stakes, asshole.

  He spun her around, pulling her against him and leaning down to spew his hot breath all over her face. Lips pulling back from his teeth, he snarled at her, making no effort to hide his long, pointed incisors.

  She let her eyes go wide, pretending to be shocked and frightened while really she was using her peripheral vision to scope out the rest of the room and peg the other vamps’ locations.

  “You picked the wrong house to go pussy-hunting in, sweet thang,” he leered.

  “Oh, I’ve got the right house,” she said, after a beat of letting him believe she was frozen in fear. It was his turn to look surprised and confused, and before he could get two of his three connective brain cells working, she added, “And you’re actually the pussy I was looking for.”

  With that, she brought her right arm up with all her strength, driving the chair leg through his leather jacket, between a couple of his ribs, and straight into his heart.

  His eyes flared in stunned disbelief, and a second later he poofed. In slow-motion, she would have seen his skin disintegrate, followed by the stark white of his skeleton until he was nothing but a pile of dust on the already dirt- and dust-covered floor.

  But it all happened too fast for the human eye to register, and she did have more important things to worry about. Confusion bought her enough time to spin on the other vamps and catch one of them with the remaining stake, but that left two more fangsters with a grudge to deal with. They came at her in a lurching rush, and she had mere tenths of a second to figure out what to do next—make a grab for the two stakes that were no longer sticking out of the dusted vamps’ chests or head for Ian.

  She headed for Ian. If nothing else, she could use her body to protect him.

  He was coming around, thank goodness. Moving slowly, stiffly, he had his arms in front of him now and his legs untied.

  Grabbing the chair, she flipped it and broke off the remaining two legs, then smashed the spindle back against the floor, leaving the pieces in hopes that Ian would catch on to exactly what they were fighting here, and put two and two together to get four: four wooden stakes, four dead blood-suckers.

  But either he was still too groggy, or his psyche just wasn’t letting him go to that vampires-are-real place in his head. Which left her on her own to deal with the two vampires closing in on her while Ian used the wall to push himself to his feet and peel the tape from his mouth.

  The stakes in her hand slowed them down a bit. Instead of rushing her, they were now stalking her one step at a time. Careful to keep them directly in front of her, she hugged the wall and walked backward, circling the room.

  “Start moving slowly toward the door,” she told Ian when she reached him, “and stay behind me.”

  Bodies pressed together, heart pounding in her chest, they moved like molasses out of the room and up the stairs to the first floor of the house. The whole while, the two ugly-ass vamps hissed and threatened and kept their razor-sharp fangs unsheathed and in full view.

  Funny how fangs had never scared her before, not when she had a set of her own to flash back. But given her current, regrettably mortal state, those razor-sharp incisors might as well have been cobras ready to strike.

  As they reached the top of the stairs, Angelina pitched her voice over her shoulder. “Can you run?”

  “I think so, yeah,” he said.

  The words were shaky and weak, which didn’t exactly fill her with confidence, but she would just have to hope for the best.

  She gave a quick nod, even though she wasn’t sure he could see it. “When we hit the front porch, I want you to take off to the right as fast as you can. My car is just down the street.”

  Announcing your plans to the enemy wasn’t exactly Rule Number One in the “Urban Warfare Handbook,” but in this situation, she didn’t have much choice. Besides, if all went well, the two Lurches beading down on them would both be lawn fertilizer before they got halfway to the sidewalk.

  Floorboards creaking beneath their feet, she and Ian made their way through the house. Whenever possible, he used the wall to support his weight, and she could hear the thumps of his steps, the slide of his body.

  She could also hear the two vamps in front of her huffing with fury like bulls preparing to charge a red cape. The veins in their throats pulsed in time with the anger rushing through their bloodstreams, and she knew that if she didn’t kill them right the first time, she probably wouldn’t get a second chance. These two had blood in their eyes, and even without her vampire sixth, seventh, and eighth senses, she could smell the violent death that awaited her and Ian at their hands.

  The front door squeaked on its hinges as Ian opened it, but instead of following him through, she stopped, buying him precious extra seconds. The vamps continued to creep forward, but she widened her stance, making sure they got a good look at the business ends of the chair legs she was still sporting.

  “Don’t let my size or the fact that I have breasts fool you, boys,” she told them, listening as Ian limped as quickly as he could across the decrepit porch and down the steps. “I know what you are, and I know how to make you cry for your sires.”

  That gave them pause. It didn’t send them running in the opposite direction—unfortunately—but it did keep them from coming any closer.

  Once she thought Ian had put enough distance between himself and the house, she started moving again. Slowly, one step at a time, backing across the porch.

  She reached the steps and knew that every moment now was critical. The two vamps came through the doorway and spread apart, flanking her, poised to attack.

  Her first instinct was to glance over her shoulder to see where Ian was, make sure he was safe, that he was far enough away, and gauge how fast she would have to move to reach him. But the minute she turned her head, she knew the vamps would be on her like ants on a lollipop. All she could do was strike out as hard and as fast as possible, then haul ass.

  Steeling herself for what was to come, she prepared to do just that. But on the next retreating pace, her heel went through the rotting wood of one of the steps and she lost her balance, falling back. Her arms flailed and she let out a shriek of surprise. Then the air left her lungs completely as she hit the ground with a thud.

  Just as she’d known they would at the first sign of weakness on her part, the two remaining vamps from the nest attacked. They covered her, hissing and spitting, going for her neck.

  But she still had the stakes, and she used them. She nailed one in the side—the best she could do with her arm pinned and at the wrong angle. He grunted and rolled off of her, the piece of wood pulling from his body with a soft squish.

  “Ang!”

  She heard her name, closer than she would have liked, and cocked her head on the grass to see Ian coming back—to rescue her.

  Dammit!

  “No! Stay back!”

  She redoubled her efforts to loosen her foot from the broken board and hold off the vamps, but it was already too late. The second the uninjured vamp heard Ian’s call, he jumped up and headed for Victim Number Two.

  “Shit,” Angelina swore. With a mighty yank, she pulled her leg free and spun to her stomach on the ground. She didn’t have time to aim, to stand, nothing. All she could do was pull back her arm and launch a stake like a dagger.

  It hit its mark…but well away from the bull’s eye and without nearly the force needed to bring the vampire down.

  He stumbled, groaned, but didn’t let it stop his forward momentum. Another few feet and he’d be on Ian, who was standing on the sidewalk, ready to fight, ready to use whatever strength he had left to defend himself and protect her to his dying breath.

  Which was exactly what she was afraid of.

  She sprang to her feet, only to be hit from behind and knocked to the ground by the other vamp—the one she’d stuck and then (stupidly) forgotten abou
t. The asshole straddled her, pressing her into the dirt and grabbing her by the hair to yank her head back. The better to bite you in the jugular, my dear.

  Fuck that. She still had a stake in her hand. The wrong hand, but that was easily remedied. Getting at a decent angle to dust the bastard was a little more difficult, but after a short struggle, she managed to buck him off slightly and roll to her side.

  Good enough. Hauling back, she staked him. Dead center, straight to the heart. A shocked expression crossed his face, and then he disintegrated, covering her with a fine layer of vamp ash.

  She didn’t waste time brushing it off, but leaped to her feet and turned for Ian. Her heart seized when she saw him on the ground, held down by the last vicious, bloodsucking vampire.

  She started forward, but wasn’t fast enough. Full throttle might as well have been slow motion. Her feet felt like they were mired in quicksand, like she was on a treadmill instead of solid ground, running as fast as she could but getting nowhere.

  And then the vamp leaned down, pressed Ian’s face away from him, and sank in his fangs.

  “Noooooooooo!” She screamed at the top of her lungs, the sound ripping through the night air, going on and on and on.

  At a run, she fell on the vampire, using her body weight to drive her stake into his back, through his heart, and out the other side. He poofed in an instant, sending her sprawling onto Ian’s bloody, unmoving form.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she searched him for signs of life. His neck was a mess. A giant red, ragged hole stood out on the left side, where the vamp had torn into him. Not just two small puncture marks, but a big, gaping wound.

  God, could he even survive this? It looked as though his jugular vein had been severed completely, blood still spurting.

  Even as a vampire, it would have taken some time, but as a human…Fear clutched her stomach, made her mouth go dry.

  She covered the gash with her hand, doing her best to shrug out of her parka and use it to staunch the flow, as well. Then, digging into the pockets, she found her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.