It had begun to rain while we were inside.
Great.
My name being called made me look up to see Longinus standing a few feet away, just on the other side of a giant steel cross with Father Mulcahy. A smile crept on my face in spite of the pain. God bless Father Mulcahy. He had gotten it done.
The plan had been that once Larson came out, Father Mulcahy would load him and his family up with Kat and Tiff, who would drive them back to Polecats. He would then set up around the building a perimeter of blessed steel crosses driven into the ground in front of all exits, which would keep any vampire inside. After that he would wait for me to come out. If I wasn’t out by dawn, he was to burn the church to the ground with me inside, then drive the Comet back. We both knew if I was trapped till dawn that I was dead.
Or worse.
The rain was cold on my back and arms as it sluiced down my body. It actually felt good on my lower back and washed the mud and blood from my face. I scrambled toward where Longinus and Father Mulcahy stood.
I wanted on the other side of that cross. I could still feel the pulse of Appollonia’s power, but it was muffled, muted. As I stood beside the cross, Father Mulcahy made a motion with his shotgun and Longinus yelled at me to get down. There was no time to duck when Charlotte slammed into me again, but I was ready for it.
The impact of her rolled us across the wet ground. I wound up on top with my hands around her throat. It was bony underneath the skin and the fur prickled my palms. Charlotte lay still and I kept my hands loose but ready to crush down if I had to.
“I can think.” She said, red eyes unblinking up at me.
I had hoped that being on this side of the cross perimeter would free her mind and it seemed to have done the job. “Can I let you up?” She nodded and I eased up off of her. I offered my hand to help her to her feet and we both stood in the rain. I motioned to Father Mulcahy that it was all right and he moved his gun from her back to the church.
She lifted her arms up into the rain and it looked as if the gray fur washed from her body. The four spider legs shrank and folded away into her back. Lids developed on her eyes and they receded into her skin, leaving only the two human ones. It took only a second for her to change from creepy spider lady to normal suburban housewife. Her hair was still long and black, but her skin was a deep chocolate. Wide hazel green eyes stared from a strong, noble face. She was still long limbed and thin, but her skin was smooth, her muscles sleek.
After a moment of standing in the rain her hands went behind her back. There was a light tearing sound of cloth ripping and both hands came out holding my guns. Webbing hung on them in wisps where she had them secured on her back. I smiled and gladly took them from her. Instantly, I felt better.
“It has been a long time since I have been able to be fully human.” Her three jointed fingers smoothed back her rain-slicked hair. “It feels good.”
I lifted my Desert Eagle up like a toast. “This feels good too. Now I’m going to see what I can do about our friend back there.”
Vampires crowded the front landing of the church. They stood silently in a formation. The steel crosses throwing pale blue light on the steps in front of them. That was the great thing about having a priest around, you never had a shortage of blessed objects. The vampires weren’t reacting to the light from the cross, but it was keeping them corralled on the landing. From the back they began jostling each other, bumping and moving the group apart.
Appollonia strode naked from their midst and they fell back before her. Red energy pulsed around her slender form, her anger and power made manifest. She held the Spear out in front of her. Fury throbbed in her voice and it carried across the distance between us. “Come back to me, Charlotte. You are mine. I command it.”
Shaking her head, Charlotte stepped back and bumped against Longinus’s chest. He put an arm around her shoulders protectively. Father Mulcahy slipped a blessed crucifix over her head. He tossed me one to hang around my neck. I could still feel her power, but between the cross I wore and the one we were sheltering behind, it was a dull throb instead of a pounding ocean.
Sighting down the barrel of the Desert Eagle, I put a red laser dot on her head and squeezed off a shot. The gun bucked in my hand, but I was close enough that my aim was true. Appollonia’s head jerked back as the bullet entered her forehead and passed through the back of her skull to hit a vampire behind her. The vamp behind her fell, knocking over the others who were crowded near him. Appollonia remained standing. I watched as her ruined head re-formed itself like clay animation. The back of her skull pulled itself together, and the skin on her forehead smoothed like water. As quick as Charlotte had changed form, Appollonia was healed.
Shit.
“You cannot kill her with guns, Deacon,” Longinus said, still holding Charlotte. “She is too close to the Curse.”
Double shit.
Father Mulcahy whistled to get my attention. He pointed to the cross in the ground before us. A stream of tiny spiders were crawling up it and beginning to weave webs to cover it. They worked fast, already the lower foot of the cross was covered.
Jerking my head toward the Comet, we started moving that way. Father Mulcahy and I kept our eyes, and guns, on Appollonia and her crowd of bloodsuckers. As the tiny spiders covered more of the cross, the vampires began to make their way down the steps of the church.
Longinus and Charlotte fell into the back seat and Father Mulcahy slid into the passenger’s side. I was opening the door when Appollonia spoke again. Her voice was seething with wrath and power. It carried across the air to me, rolling like thunder.
“Before dawn breaks, I will kill you all.”
I stood one leg in the car, rain falling cold against my skin, and I raised my middle finger to her.
“Right back at you, bitch. Right back at you.”
20
The ass end of the Comet slung around as the tires met asphalt. I stomped the accelerator and the car shot forward down the road. Vampires boiled out of the tall grass that hid the road from view. They had caught up with us about halfway down the dirt road from the church and had been hot on our trail ever since. Several times they had almost overtaken the car because I could only drive so fast on the twisted dirt road that had turned to slick mud in the rain. Now that we were on the asphalt, I put the hammer down.
A loud screech of talons on metal ripped through the roar of the engine as one of the vampires tried to claw his way onto the car. Another crazed vampire hit the driver’s side door with a thud. Looking over, she was holding on the edge of the windshield, her mouth distended. Fangs clicked on the glass as she tried to chew her way in through the window on my door. Long, tangled hair streamed in the wind flow from the car. Spittle smeared the glass until I couldn’t see anything but her shape.
I jerked the steering wheel back and forth, making the car swerve wildly across wet asphalt. Her scream sounded over the roar of the engine as she was slung off the car, ending with a thud into the asphalt behind us. In the rearview mirror I watched her roll to a stop and then get up, her arms broken and twisted into obscene wings. She still ran after us even though one of her legs was broken and made her lurch to one side as if she were drunk. Her fellow vampires caught up with her but were growing more distant every second. Even the flyers would never be fast enough to catch the Comet on the open road. I turned my eyes back to the road.
“We’re leaving them behind. We can outrun them, but they will follow us.” I glanced over to Father Mulcahy, who was lighting a cigarette. He had put his shotgun between his knees in the floorboard. “Did Kat get Larson and his family back to the club?”
I pointed at the glove compartment and he opened it. Pulling out a bottle of ibuprofen, he popped the cap and poured three of the brown pills into my outstretched hand. My fingers twitched in a “keep ’em coming” motion and he spilled out four more. Bitterness stuck to my tongue as I swallowed them. I hate taking pills dry, but the aches and pains of my injuries through the last two nights were s
tarting to pile up and I had work to do.
“They did, she called just before you came out of the church.” Blue smoke billowed across the roof of the Comet and around his head as he turned to look in the back. “And who might you two be?”
A thin, elegant hand extended over the seat. “My name is Charlotte.”
Father Mulcahy took her offered hand, blew out a stream of smoke, and lowered his lips to kiss the back. “Father Dominic Mulcahy.” A smile crossed Charlotte’s face and the priest matched it with one of his own. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“My name is Longinus.” The Celt made no move to lean up, just waved his hand. Father Mulcahy did the guy nod of acknowledgment. The one where you just move your head up and down because you recognize the information as important but you have no idea why.
“He’s THE Longinus from history, Padre.” I kept checking the mirrors for vamps as I drove. “Just so you know.” This should be interesting. Catholic priest meet someone who actually was a partaker in the Crucifixion of Christ. Father Mulcahy turned his body until his back was against the car door. He took a long drag from his cigarette and flicked the ash out the crack in the window behind him.
“St. Longinus? Longinus of the Long Spear? Bearer of the Holy Lance?” There was a hint of awe in his voice.
I nodded and Longinus frowned in the dim light of the back seat. “Don’t think too highly of him, Padre, he’s the reason we have the most powerful she-bitch vampire I have ever met hot on our trail.” I flicked the windshield wipers on high, swooshing the rain from left to right. “Hell, he’s the reason we have vampires at all.”
“Trust Deacon’s word. I am no saint to be revered, but rather the worst sinner to be despised.” Deep-sunk eyes cast down to the darkness of the floorboard.
Father Mulcahy’s voice was thick with cigarette smoke. “That is a story I would like to hear. And I will make my own judgment, thank you very much.”
“Call Kat first and tell her we are coming and to be ready. Larson’s family, Tiff, and Larson himself can go ahead and get the hell out of there. We’ll figure out a way to take Appollonia and her vampires out when they show up.”
Nodding, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the button for Polecats. In short sentences he relayed what I said and hung up. I turned on some music, low so the others could talk, but enough to let me go off in my head and think. Robert Johnson began to moan about hellhounds on his trail. His voice ghosting out of the Comet’s speakers, weary and full of hopelessness.
Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail ...
I knew exactly how he felt. I had to figure out what to do. Appollonia was coming, hard and fast on our asses like a rabid hellhound on a bloody steak. We would get to the club first, but we wouldn’t have much time, maybe an hour before the Vampocalypse arrived.
Vampires were fast, not as fast as the Comet, but fast nonetheless. We could run, but then they would probably go on a killing spree. That would put too many humans in harm’s way. Fuck running anyway. That was so not my style.
Dying without stopping the monsters wasn’t my style either.
The only thing I could think of would be to hole up, gather as many weapons as possible, and lock the club down except for one entrance. Let them pour in to get me and lock them in. We’d see who made it until morning. It was a crap plan, but it was all I was going to have time for.
Father Mulcahy would insist on staying with me, but I could maneuver him into getting Kat to safety and making sure the vampires were secured inside with me. That would put him outside and out of danger. Longinus could come in and get his spear once the ashes settled. I would make him join me, but he was so weak he would be useless in a fight. Yep, it was a crap plan, but it was simple and it could work.
Yeah, right.
I tuned back in to the conversation between Longinus and Father Mulcahy at the end of Longinus’s story. That was fine, I had already heard it before. Longinus fell silent when he had finished confessing his sins to the priest. We sat and listened to the rumble of the engine, the swish of the windshield wipers in the rain, and Robert Johnson moving on to the crossroads.
Father Mulcahy was the first to break the silence between us as he looked at Longinus and then turned back around to face forward. Bowing his head slightly, he settled into the leather seat. His fingers moved quickly, touching his head, his heart, and his shoulders making the sign of the cross. The cigarette dangling from his lip did not fall out when he spoke. “That is one hell of a story, son. One hell of a story indeed.”
I looked in the rearview mirror at the back seat. Being on the highway I could look in the back more and still stay on the road. It was a rainy night and just after midnight according to the clock on the stereo, so traffic was light, especially this far north. Longinus was looking out of the window at the darkness. Charlotte sat next to Longinus in the back seat, one hand on his arm, touching him for comfort. I didn’t know if it was his comfort or hers, but I guess it didn’t really matter.
Asking the question that had been bothering me since the confrontation outside the church brought Charlotte’s eyes to meet mine in the mirror. “Longinus, what the hell happened with Appollonia when I shot her? Vampires do not stay standing with a bullet to the brain. Was that the Spear’s doing?”
He didn’t look up, just kept staring out into the dark. “I told you she is too close to the Curse for bullets to work on her. The speed of her healing was the Spear’s influence, but your bullet would not have killed her.”
I’ve killed some old-ass vampires in my time. Everyone of them went down with a bullet to the brain. “Exactly how old is Appollonia?”
“The best that I could figure when I first hunted her was two generations from the Curse. She was turned a vampire by someone who was a vampire I made myself.” He shifted, now looking ahead over the seat. Sweat poured from his skin even though he was wearing the least amount of clothes of us all. “She is old, and that gains her power, but even if she were newly dead, her lineage would make her immune to bullets.”
“So what will kill the bitch?”
Muscles corded on his arms and shoulders as a convulsion of pain wracked his body. When he spoke, it was through clenched teeth. “When a vampire is close to the Curse, then they are bound more tightly to the conditions of the Curse. The Spear would kill her, but a wooden stake through the heart would do.”
Well, that explained the stake through the heart part of vampires. I had always wondered about that. I knew that a stake through the heart would kill a vampire, but never could figure out why it was something so random. Now I knew. Because Longinus, who started vampirism, was cursed to die only by the Spear of Destiny, then the trickle-down effect must be why a stake through the heart worked on vampires today. Apparently if the vampire was close to Longinus, then it could be killed only by wood through the heart. That made shit considerably more difficult. Somehow I didn’t think Appollonia was going to lie down and let me shove a stick into her chest, no matter how attracted to me she was.
The sound of vomiting came rolling over the seat. Father Mulcahy turned to look and I glanced in the rearview mirror to see what was happening. Longinus was now leaning over, his head resting on the back of the seat. Arms wrapped tightly around his stomach, he was dry heaving and convulsing. Charlotte’s hands fluttered on his back in soothing gestures. She looked up to my eyes in the mirror.
“His injuries are catching up to him. I think he needs blood to heal himself.”
“No!” Longinus threw himself against the corner of the car, as far from her as he could get in the confines of the back seat. The tendons in his neck stood out like steel cables. “I will heal, it will pass.”
“You have not been fed in weeks. I was one of your captors, I know how weak you are.” Her voice was soft, soothing. “You need to take blood so you can fight Appollonia and regain the Spear.”
His head lashed side to side, eyes wild and teeth clenched. “I do not drink from the vein anymore.
My sins are great enough without that. I will wait for blood until I can get it somewhere else.” Sweat ran down his face and arms. The hoarseness of his voice did nothing to cut the venom as he spat. “I will not die.”
“You are needed tonight to fight Appollonia. You must have your strength.” She pulled her hair to the side, sweeping it off of her neck. Holding up her hand, one thin finger extended and morphed into a razor-sharp needle of talon. Delicately, she pushed the edge of the nail into the vein on her neck.
The blood was bright and crimson on her dark flesh as it welled up. The rich iron smell of it filled the inside of the car, mixing with the cigarette smoke. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she crawled into his lap. He didn’t fight her as she placed her open vein beside his face. Teeth sank into his lower lip and his head shied away from her, pressing deeply into the leather of the seat behind him. Nostrils flaring, he began to tremble.
“Drink from me.” Her finger was normal again as she wiped blood from her neck. “You talk of sin. I was made to sin against you, let me atone for that now. Lycanthrope blood is powerful to vampires.” Even in the dim light of the Comet’s interior, her fingers smeared scarlet across his lips. “Let my blood heal you.”
His tongue darted out, drawing some of the blood from his lips into his mouth. Eyes closed, he savored it for a moment. Tears streamed from down his cheeks as his mouth opened wide. Slowly his canines slid out into fangs. Charlotte’s face was calm as she waited for him to drink. Tenderly, his arms wrapped around her, drawing her against him and pressing his mouth to her throat.
Father Mulcahy turned back to face the windshield, pulling another cigarette from the pack.
I turned up the music to cover the wet sounds of thirst from the back seat and drove on into the night.
21
The table before us was laden with weapons and explosives. Father Mulcahy was off finding clothes for Longinus, who was looking hale and hearty after his meal of Were-spider blood. The spider lady in question was a bit shaky, but she promised that would pass as she drank a steaming cup of coffee from the kitchen. Long fingers held the mug gracefully and her eyes closed with pleasure as she sipped the steaming drink. The fang marks on her throat were surrounded by a black-and-blue bruise that extended from her ear to her shoulder. Kat was watching Longinus unwind the webbing around his chest and stomach. The skin underneath was whole and smooth. Larson sat watching Kat and I was so angry I could spit nails.
Blood and Bullets Page 20