“I don’t.” My voice cut into him. He flinched and then looked up. “We have to act as if they are and we can save them. But I do not know if they are still alive or not. All I can do is promise you that if they are not, then we will kill every motherfucker who touched them tonight.” Picking up my plate, I carried it over to the sink. “Now pull it together. We need your knowledge to make our plan. Get your shit together for your family and come to the conference room.” I was at the door now and I turned to look at him. There was one last thing.
“And clean up your fucking mess before you come.”
15
It was crunch time. We were going to be gearing up against the scariest fucking vampire I had ever heard of. We had innocents held hostage by the monsters. We had no advantage. It was a crap situation and so I’d had to remind Larson who was in charge of things. If he didn’t get it after the scene in the kitchen, then he never would. If that was the case, I would use him to get to Appollonia and once that was done, I would tie him up and stuff him in the trunk of the car until it was all over.
The chair I always picked in the conference room molded to my back. Feet up on the table, I leaned back into it, finding the sweet spot that made it my chair. Everybody would be in shortly and we would come up with the best plan we could.
Would Larson’s family survive? I didn’t know. I didn’t even know if they were still alive at the moment. That couldn’t come close to being my concern. I could only pray they were. I had never met them, and so far Larson had almost been more trouble than he was worth, but they were human.
Since my family was taken from me, I’ve worked to save any humans I can from the monsters. If you are human, I will put my life between you and the monsters. One day that mission will end and send me to where my family is. I know this, and it is fine by me. I can’t take myself there, though; it has to happen when it happens. One day my ticket will be punched. Until then I take out every monster I can.
I said a prayer of safety for Larson’s family. Yes, I pray. For all the blood I shed, I do pray. I firmly believe in God, I am a good Catholic. If you had seen a demon face-to-face, you would believe too. I’ve watched crosses turn away vampires, I’ve seen holy water drive away demons, and I have rescued an Angel of the Lord. Hell yes, I believe. So I prayed for their safety and their lives. I don’t pray nearly often enough. Truthfully, I pretty much rely on Father Mulcahy to cover that department.
Prayer doesn’t result in thunder and lightning. There haven’t been any burning bushes. Sometimes there is nothing at all. But occasionally, I get this feeling, kind of like a weightless weight, and it causes a shiver down my spine. I believe this is an acknowledgment of my prayer. Not an answer, just an acknowledgment.
It’s enough because it has to be. That’s the deal.
The prayer was short. As I finished I felt eyes on me. Looking up, I found Tiff leaning in the doorway. I didn’t say anything, just looked at her. She was dressed normally in a pair of jeans and a sweater. The sweater was blue and black and matched her hair color. Her hair touched the sweater at the shoulders and that is all. It wasn’t straightened today and had nice wavy locks that framed her face.
The heavy Goth makeup was gone and in its place was a cute face scrubbed clean. Her eyes were still big and blue, set above a cute nose and full lips. The jeans and sweater fit and showed off a cute figure. She was small and built like a gymnast. There was something delicate about Tiff. Something that made you feel like protecting her but didn’t detract from her desirability. She was adorable. In her eyes I saw care and concern for me. Care, concern ... and something else.
There was a heat in her eyes. She seemed innocent as a lamb, but that look was not innocent at all. She did a long, slow blink at me and a smile danced at the corners of her mouth. Pushing off the door frame, she walked into the room.
“I am not sure I know all that is going on around here. I know something weird happened last night at the club. I don’t know what it was. You promised me a reason why I had to leave my job, and all I have gotten so far is a really tasty omelet.”
I had promised to tell her why she was here. Truthfully, I didn’t completely know. Getting her out of Helletog was a no-brainer, but telling her to come here for a job wasn’t a well-thought-out plan. Still, I could at least tell her why she had to leave her job, especially since she had seen the confrontation with Larson. Should I break it to her gently? Nah. Not really my style.
“The club you worked for was owned by a vampire. I had gone there to kill him and I didn’t want to leave you behind.” See, that was simple enough. Rip the bandage right off, won’t sting a bit.
Realization dawned on her face. “Gregorios was a vampire? A real vampire? As in ‘I vant to suck your blood’ vampire?” I nodded to her question. Her head shook, sending those big locks of hair sweeping across her face. Sitting in the chair closest to me, she leaned forward. That was one really well-fitting sweater she had on. I was listening as she continued, I promise. “I mean, I knew he was Goth, it was a Goth club, but I met him during the day. Don’t vampires explode in the sunlight?”
“Not so much explode as they burn up like a human-sized birthday candle. And during the day you met his renfield, and that is a whole other subject. But Gregorios’s renfield looked a lot like him.” Greggie had not survived his master’s demise. I had Father Mulcahy go check while we headed to the jack shack earlier. Greggie had turned to dust. He had obviously lived far longer than a mortal was supposed to. Both the bouncers were gone when Father Mulcahy got there.
Her full lips pursed and blew a puff of air to move the hair that had slid down toward her eyes. She sat in shock, thinking about what I had said. It was a lot to take in. Undead, bloodsucking creatures of the night are always a shock the first time you realize they actually exist. After a long moment, her big eyes turned up to look at me again.
“So, if my boss was a vampire, then why didn’t he try to bite me?”
I thought about my answer for a moment. “Oh, I am sure he would have gotten to it soon. You are pretty bite-able.”
A blush crawled up her cheeks and came to stay for a minute. It made me grin.
“Why, Mr. Chalk, are you flirting with me?” The smile crossed her face, cheeks still glowing pink.
“I could be, darlin’, I very well could be.” My smile matched hers. Yep, I could be indeed. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen in the past twenty-four hours.
16
The highway stretched before us. Sunset was running away and we were chasing it to a place that was in Larson’s head. I could feel the night like a pressure building. The sun barely crested the pine trees along the asphalt, peeking out like a child playing hide-and-seek. Larson’s family was counting on us to beat that sunset. The vampires were out of commission as long as the smallest sliver of sun remained above the horizon.
So far, the directions had led to Interstate 75 northbound. Highway 75 is one of those huge stretches of road that you can travel from Detroit all the way to Miami. It cuts straight through the middle of Georgia and is a well-maintained piece of roadwork. After driving for about two hours, we were not far from the Tennessee border, in the no man’s land of small towns and middle-of-nowhere’s. The Comet was streaking up the road like its namesake, eating the miles in a rumble of engine and whine of tire tread.
My compass and traveling companion sat up against the seat belt. His head leaned like a golden retriever. He was paying attention to the directions Appollonia had put in his head. Sweat oiled his skin, and the veins in his temples stood out like wires under his skin. Traveling had activated the power Appollonia had sunk into his brain earlier. Since getting into the car the strain of those vampiric powers had shown more and more in Larson. Plus, he hadn’t slept and really hadn’t eaten, so they were doing a real number on his system.
We had researched Appollonia, but Kat had found very little information on her. She was old, very old, but not much other than that. No history or rumo
rs about her, no picture either. So she was old and powerful. That was about all we knew. Oh yeah, we knew one more thing: She was scary as hell.
“Turn off here.”
I took the next exit. The Comet complained its annoyance at slowing down with a loud rumble of pipes. The end of the ramp came and I followed Larson’s finger point. The road curved and swayed like a drunk uncle, asphalt ribboning between hills and dips.
“We’re getting close. I can feel it.” His eyes turned back to me. He had some color back in his face, especially on the left side where my backhand earlier caused a bruise to blossom along his cheek. His left eye was swollen and red. I really hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. Maybe it looked worse because of his pale skin. Yeah, that was it. At least he could still see out of both eyes.
I turned down the stereo. During the trip we had been listening to Son Seals’s Lettin’ Go album. Chicago blues, deep and true. It was Son’s last studio album before his death. Recorded after he had survived being shot in the mouth by his wife and having his leg amputated because of diabetes complications, it was a powerful record. Every song vibrating with the power of Son’s charisma in spite of his hardships. Larson wasn’t very talkative once we hit the highway, so music it was. I could see in his eyes he had something to say now.
“Do you really think your plan is going to work?” he asked. “It seems pretty unplanned to me.”
Truth was, the plan was not really a plan. It was a string of ideas that should work. But really, it was the best we could come up with considering how little information we had to go on.
“It’ll work.” What other answer could I give? No, it will fail spectacularly and your family will die, but don’t worry, when it fails we won’t be far behind them? Besides, confidence will carry you when ability fails.
Sometimes anyway.
“Do you really think they will let you keep your weapons?”
I couldn’t look at him, I was still flying down the road and it was getting curvier as we went. Darkness filled the area around the car, cut by the headlights. The sun was still up, but on the road we were in the shadow of the mountains. Out in the country there are no streetlights. I felt when we crossed the Tennessee line. Tennessee has no state taxes and their roadwork is not the priority it is in Georgia. The road changed from smooth and even into something more like an alligator’s skin.
“I doubt they will let me hold on to the guns, but who knows about the rest. Vampires are strange. I don’t know why, since they used to be humans, but their brains don’t work like humans’ do. If they are old enough, they won’t even recognize the other stuff. Since we don’t know what we are walking into, it won’t hurt to try.”
Larson’s fist slammed into the dash and he convulsed like a live wire had switched on in his brain. Spine bowed and teeth clenched, he growled. “Turn here!”
My eyes began searching the side he was pointing at. That’s the only way I saw the turnoff. It yawned out in the midst of the grass that stood sentinel at the road’s edge—a dirt road, narrow and red that cut back into the weeds and woods. Hitting the brakes, my fingers pulled the chain steering wheel in a hard right. The Comet slid onto the road, the tires chewing the dirt like a pit bull on a bone. A tap on the gas to goose the engine pulled the car straight and onto the crooked road.
Red dust billowed up around the car, wafting across the headlights and powdering the windshield. Driving on a back country dirt road is an experience unto itself. The dirt is a reddish orange and made of clay. The red comes from a combination of Georgia’s and Tennessee’s high heat and heavy rainfall that leaches out most minerals in the soil, leaving behind high doses of iron oxide. It’s really good for growing pine trees, some shitty crabgrass, and kudzu, but not much else. On a dirt road it does two things. Rainfall washes away the soil unevenly, making ruts and gulleys in the road. This makes driving down them quite the adventure. Especially if you are into bronco riding.
Blindfolded.
With your hands tied.
The second thing is the dust. Red clay turns into a powder when it’s dry. This makes a huge dust cloud that can make it damn near impossible to see. You drive by feel for the most part. If the road is wet, you don’t get the dust, but you exchange it for a mud that is as slick as oil.
I brought the Comet’s speed down some so that I wouldn’t damage anything on the bumpy road. The car is a good, solid hunk of American Detroit iron, but it wasn’t invulnerable. I really didn’t want to get where we were going and not be able to leave. As the dirt road went farther, the pine trees continued to thicken along its side, completely blocking the sun. I knew it was still up but couldn’t see it at all. As the car straightened on the road, a peeling white sign loomed in the tall grass on the roadside: SHADOW WOODS MOBILE HOME VILLAGE. TRAILERS FOR RENT. A smaller sign underneath swung like a hanged man from a single rusty nail: SHADOW WOODS BAPTIST CHURCH.
Larson slumped in his seat. If he hadn’t been wearing his seat belt he would have fallen to the floor. The road spewed us out into a clearing where all the trees had been cut away. I put on the brakes and the cloud of red dust shot past the car. Hills rose in the clearing, bare of vegetation. It was a dead place. No trees. Not even kudzu, which could grow in hell. Trailers thirty years past their prime leaned and sagged, scattered on the hills like rice thrown at a wedding. The trailers were mostly single-wide. Their paint schemes were straight from the seventies and faded from decades of the southern sun.
Here and there were cousins of the Comet, abandoned and hopeless. Stripped of parts, what was left of the cars smashed by someone who just didn’t care. Trash abounded, faded beer cans and cardboard boxes mostly. The road we were on was a ribbon cutting back and forth among the trailers. It was a big, dirt bowl of death. It was a trailer park from Hades.
His finger touching the window, Larson pointed to the crest of the tallest hill. The road crept over it. The voice he used was hushed. “There. Over that hill. That’s where we are going.”
The sun couldn’t be seen on the other side of that hill, but I felt it as it slipped below the horizon. It was like a door that was open had shut with a muffled push. In its wake something filled the trailer park. It wasn’t life. No, what spilled into that place had nothing to do with life. Inside, my head was a buzzing of power. Buzzing like zombie flies over a bloated corpse.
One by one, the doors on the dilapidated trailers popped open. Stumbling out of them were vampires. Lots of damn vampires. Ten and twenty to a trailer. They poured out of every place you could have hidden a vampire from the sun. But they were off, way off. Not one of them looked at the Comet or the two humans inside of it, and none of them moved with the unnatural grace that all vampires seem to come stocked with. Each step fell heavy as if they were marching to a drumbeat we could not hear. Their arms hung limply at their sides as they moved almost in one mind and headed toward our destination over the hill. We watched as they formed a mass and marched out of sight in lockstep.
I had a very bad feeling about this.
17
The nose of the Comet topped over the crest of the hill. Just below it sat what used to be the Shadow Woods Baptist Church. It looked like most country churches in the South. Made of red brick with a sharply sloped roof, it sat forlorn and misused. The stained glass sides were all broken out and replaced with plywood to block the sun. The cross on the steeple had been taken and turned upside down. Cobwebs draped the church building and fluttered in the breeze.
Vampires cannot be on holy ground. Churches are consecrated buildings and vampires generally steer clear. Being in a church won’t kill them, but it is so uncomfortable they will normally not even be on the property. This church had been desecrated, so it was fair game for them. It wasn’t just the cross either; you could feel the desecration in your bones. A taint of evil was in the very air around it, almost shimmering in the twilight. This church had been used for blasphemous purposes. Evil had been done here with determination. I hoped that the stain of evil w
asn’t so powerful that it messed up what little plan we had. Either way, we had no choice, full steam ahead, and damn the torpedoes.
The vampires filed inside the building, shuffling up concrete steps to the double doors. We had waited and watched until the roads had cleared of them. They moved in unison, more like zombies with their hive mind than vampires. Lockstep, they entered the church, closing the door behind them.
Gravel crunched under the tires as I pulled in front of the church and turned the car so that the nose faced out away from the church. If we made it out of this, I wanted it easy to get the hell out of there. Turning to Larson, I tapped him on the shoulder. He was facing out the window, attention locked on the church. With the touch of my finger he jerked toward me, eyes wild in their sockets. I pointed to the glove compartment. He nodded and opened it to get the blessed cross I had put in there earlier.
He slipped it over his head and under his shirt. Instantly, his face relaxed. Not by much, but some. He didn’t look as panicked now. Leaning into the Comet’s upholstery, he closed his eyes.
“Remember, when we get in here, you listen to me. I have no idea what we are walking into, but if I tell you to do something, you listen to me and you do it. This part we are playing by ear.” He nodded, still keeping his eyes closed. This part was going to be hard. “Look, Larson, we don’t know what we might find in here. If your family is gone, then we will make these bastards pay.”
His lids snapped open and the look in his eyes was harsh. He nodded once up and down. “I know” was all he said.
The warning was the best I could do for him until we got inside. Stepping out of the car and into the chill night air, I grabbed my coat and flung it around me, slipping my arms down the sleeves. It was heavy on my shoulders. Larson was still dressed in his T-shirt, but he also put on his coat. His spine was straight and the big trench coat didn’t seem so silly now. Larson squared his shoulders and we walked up the short stairs without a backward glance.
Blood and Bullets Page 15