Vampire Innocent | Book 11 | How To Stop A Vampire War In Six Easy Steps

by Cox, Matthew S.

  He already knows about Sophia since it’s literally impossible for me to keep secrets from a vampire so much older than me. I explain the messed-up scrying, Sierra getting yanked unintentionally across Seattle to a warehouse, the resulting fight, and everything she overheard them talking about. Without a doubt, he’s watching it all unfold in my head. No problem. It’s not because he doesn’t trust me, he’s probably looking at faces to see if he recognizes anyone. Plus reading thoughts is like a hundred times faster than speaking. He’s certainly sent people to check out the warehouse already, but it’s not obvious he’s learned much from it yet. Perhaps the meeting he’d been in when I arrived involved the vamps he sent to check on the place.

  “I spoke with Petra before coming here tonight.”

  “Isn’t she trying to destroy you?”

  “We’re not friends, really. This all started—at least for me—with her showing up to threaten me for firebombing her house. She assumed I did it. To keep her from shredding me, I promised to share whatever information I found about who really did it. She knows of Anselme, said he lives in Astoria, at Cathedral Tree Cemetery. He’s also a mystic, which explains how he’s turning cadavers stolen from mortuaries into weapons. Also makes sense how he got this information. Must be from scrying or snorting tea leaves.”

  He glances at the laptop.

  “It’s got notes, photos, information, many secrets.” I lean forward, lowering my voice. “I think Anselme is using magic to pluck secrets out of the spirit world. All these comments sound like things he can use to set the elders against each other.”

  “Interesting. What did you read?”

  “Are you implying I know nothing of this or seriously asking?”

  He smiles. “I’d appreciate your confidentiality. However, the question was sincere.”

  “Most of it is stuff like who had a dispute or bad blood with who. Things an agitator could use to exploit. Like… how the elders think Aurélie is controlling you and running things by proxy.”

  Wolent chuckles. “It doesn’t take strange mystical means to pick up on that old rumor. I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Wolent taps his head by his right eye. “Furies are really damn difficult to charm. Comes from being hard-headed.”

  I smile.

  “All right, kid.” He pats the laptop. “This is a great find. Stay alert and keep your head down. The waves are going to be getting a bit choppy around here soon.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He escorts me to the door personally, wishes me well, and walks briskly back inside.

  Something tells me I may have launched the vampire equivalent of an ICBM at this Anselme guy. Nah. Not my fault. Dude whacked a hornet’s nest. It’s time for him to get stung. Hmm. Is starting a war the best way to go about stopping one? Fingers crossed we’re not about to see an all-out vampiric shitstorm between Astoria and Seattle.

  32

  The Walking Derp

  Other than carrying a sword at all times, my life is quiet for a few days.

  Mom and Dad think the ‘forces of evil’ have gotten bored with me because I’m not politically significant and they’ve already failed to leverage the animosity certain parties have over me as a useful tool to create instability. Dad suggests Anselme didn’t have a particular problem with me, merely thought I’d be a means by which he could get Aurélie and Stefano/Paolo going at it. Since it didn’t work, no further need to mess with me.

  Here’s hoping.

  Unlife goes on, as they say. Okay, no one says that. They say ‘life goes on,’ but the sentiment is the same. So, yeah. School, homework, taking Sophia to Dance class or Sam/Sierra to Taekwondo when Mom gets stuck at work, hanging out here and there with Ashley, Michelle and/or Hunter is a nice change of pace. I’m afraid to feel too normal because it will piss the Universe off. I’m definitely not letting my guard down about the Anselme situation until Wolent or Aurélie tell me it’s over.

  By now, maybe some of Wolent’s people went to Astoria and pounded Anselme and his associates into a thin red paste… but no one’s said anything yet. Oh, Mr. Niedermeyer ended up being interviewed by a paranormal YouTube guy due to his claim aliens threw ‘an unidentified black substance’ at him. The dude was so pissed off at ‘kids pranking him,’ he legit called the cops. They tested the slime and couldn’t determine what it was. I heard their lab equipment did some funky things after exposure to the stuff.

  Yeah, the PIBs found out about it. Yeah, they paid me a visit.

  I also brought them up to speed on what I knew about Anselme. Not sure whatever department they work for has the resources to deal with vampire-related unrest, but they appeared content to hear my information and leave—not before asking me to make Mr. Niedermeyer forget the black goop entirely. They also had the YouTube guy in their van. Yeah, I had to erase his memory of the interview, too.

  Honestly, it didn’t bug me to do since it’s not a conspiracy capable of hurting anyone. Bothered me more they had the guy handcuffed and hooded. Kidnapping a dude is totally icky. I would’ve gone to the guy’s place to erase his mind. But I guess the government’s obliging about delivery mind alteration. Right to my doorstep.

  It’s once again a Wednesday night. Strange thing about days… they recur every week.

  Dad declares a spontaneous movie night after dinner when all the friends have gone home.

  He puts on Maximum Overdrive.

  Interesting premise. Various machines somehow come to life and try to kill people. Everything from toasters to trucks. Sierra thinks it’s hilarious. Sophia’s scared. Great, she’s probably going to be hesitant around appliances for a few days. The movie makes Mom and Dad nostalgic looking at various gadgets like they had in the house as kids. Blenders, wall phones, radios, and so on.

  Right around the time the people take shelter in the building while all the cars surround them outside, I get this sudden weird feeling. The air in the room gets heavier, almost like a house-sized beach ball is resting on my head.

  Dad apparently notices an odd look on my face and pauses the movie. “Sare? You okay?”

  “Fine, but I’m picking up some kind of odd telepathic energy.” I concentrate on the unexplained feeling, reaching out mental feelers in an attempt to make sense of it. Hello? Who or what is this? After a moment of not getting a reply, I shrug. “It’s like I’m trying to make contact with an entity of some kind nearby, but whatever it is doesn’t feel truly conscious. It’s possibly alive, but like, only at the edge of being sentient. It might not even be aware of its own existence.”

  “Is Kanye at the door?” asks Dad.

  Mom covers her mouth, holding back a laugh.

  “Or Uncle Hank,” deadpans Sam.

  The girls laugh.

  “Uncle Hank is definitely aware of his own existence, and he’s determined to punish everyone for it,” I mutter.

  A splintering crash comes from the back yard.

  Sam perks up, looking toward the kitchen.

  “Even I heard that. Probably a deer crashing over the fence.” Mom gets up and heads to the kitchen to look.

  A loud shattering of glass precedes Mom screaming.

  I grab my katana—yes, I had it with me for movie night—and leap over the back of the sofa. I have a clear view through the dining room into the kitchen at the patio door, which is in a million pieces on the floor, smashed open by a pair of ‘zombies’ forcing their way inside. Mom jumps back from a hand trying to grab her.

  Three of them push past the frame of the patio door, bending it inward. One gets caught up in the twisted metal and falls on his face, his two pals walking over him toward Mom. I run to the kitchen, going after the zombie closest to my mother. He doesn’t react at all to my approach, giving me a nice easy shot at his neck. A swipe of my katana launches his head across the kitchen into the sink. I rear back and punt him in the chest, throwing the body out the door into the yard.

  Dad grapples the second standing corpse, struggling to pin him against the wa
ll where the patio door used to attach. Klepto appears on his head in a flash of teleportation sparkles, dangling a red headband from her mouth. Once she notices my father’s hands are a bit occupied, the kitten puts it on for him.

  “Thanks, kitty,” growls Dad in between grunts.

  I chop the head off the corpse who got tangled up in the frame of the door. Oh, damn, he stinks. The body isn’t rotting… just the dead blood dribbling out of his neck stump smells astoundingly nauseating to vampires. It’s worse than a bag of potatoes forgotten in a drawer until they decompose into dark liquid. I grab the body and toss it out the door.

  Another corpse jumps on me from behind and bites me on the side of the neck.

  Some idiot vampire forgot he’s piloting a dead body without fangs.

  Splat!

  Brain matter showers over me, covering Dad, the wall, the floor. The arms around me lose strength as the body goes limp and collapses. I sheepishly turn to look behind me and there’s Mom, examining the bottom of her two-handed iron skillet.

  “Oh, dear…” Mom cringes at the gore on the walls. “Is that going to wash off?”

  My D&D-loving father considers the skillet an enchanted weapon he calls ‘Imp’s Bane.’ Doesn’t matter it couldn’t kill an imp. They’re surprisingly resistant to blunt force trauma. Need superhuman strength to make them burst open. Mom did knock a few loopy enough to leave them vulnerable to being caught and stabbed, but the skillet didn’t directly kill any.

  “Maybe.” I put the katana to the throat of the body Dad’s holding against the wall and slice the head off.

  He tosses the corpse outside, then gasps for breath.

  “Didn’t think I hit him that hard,” mutters Mom.

  “They do seem to be a little squishy,” I say.

  “What are they?” asks Mom.

  “Zombies.” Dad nods once. “Obviously. More are coming.”

  I look out into the yard. At least fifteen stumbling dead people shuffle toward us. One steps on Sam’s soccer ball and wipes out. Another literally clotheslines itself on Mom’s clothes line, and falls over backward, arms flailing. Two crash into each other and get tangled in something like a sloppy kiss.

  “Wow, it’s like watching remote control robot wars if they gave the controllers to the visually impaired.” I chuckle. “They’re not a serious problem. More annoying than dangerous.”

  Sword high, I jog out to confront them before they get into the house. Loose brain matter is much less of a cleaning problem on grass than in the kitchen. Dad runs around the swarm, heading for the tool shed. Eep, he’s going for the weed-whacker I bet. Zombies start chasing him. Dad barely managed to hold one off. He’s not going to handle four at a time.

  “Mom, guard the doorway!” I yell before racing over to keep them away from my father.

  It occurs to me, in addition to the ones walking around, the yard’s littered with the remains of about twenty more bodies already torn to shreds. Never thought I’d say this, but having a hellhound is really handy. Equally effective at stopping random zombie invasions and door-to-door salesmen.

  The buzzing of the weed whacker engine starts up in the shed. Dad appears at the doorway, headband flowing in the wind, weed-eater held high and revving. He’s a combination of Chevy Chase and Conan, heavy on the Chevy but way closer to Egon.

  Know what’s really bizarre? Watching someone decapitate zombies with a weed-eater.

  These bodies are unusually squishy. Since Dad appears to have things under control, I slash my way back to the door where Mom’s playing whack-a-rat. They might have overwhelmed her if not for how they keep tripping over their fallen brethren.

  Shouts at the other end of the house tell me the Littles are fending off a frontal assault. Oh, dammit… I’m about to panic until I realize they don’t sound worried. Mostly Sierra yelling ‘one over there’ and Sophia chiming ‘got him’ every like fifteen seconds. Blix occasionally emits a war screech.

  I can’t even call fighting these things ‘fighting.’ It’s like practicing my katana technique on bundled straw mats capable of wandering around. Sure, they’re trying to cave my face in, but they’re kinda slow.

  A few seconds after the sounds of battle fade, a flamethrower blast goes off in the yard, lighting three moving corpses at once.

  “Whoa!” yells Dad over the idling weed-whacker.

  Seeing no more moving bodies, I walk over to him. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, fine.” He holds his gardening tool with the bravado of a soldier carrying an M-60 machine gun. I imagine his headband wavering in a breeze. Pity the wind’s calm.

  “I’m impressed. You overpowered a zombie.”

  He wags his eyebrows. “My family was in danger.”

  “Still… Those things are abnormally strong.”

  “Well… you know how parents can sometimes lift cars off their kids in times of crisis. I had a lot of motivation.”

  Oh, no… what sort of supernatural craziness is going on with my Dad now? Is Dalton giving him hits of blood on the sly, too?

  Another flamethrower blast lights up some body parts.

  Bewildered, Mom wanders a few steps out from the smashed patio door. “Sophia? Are you using magic past your bedtime?”

  “She didn’t do this,” I say.

  A moment later, Sophia appears in the gaping hole of our former patio door. “This wasn’t me… and you guys said it was okay for us to stay up a little late to watch the movie.” She points back over her shoulder into the house. “We have dead people in the living room.”

  Mom groans.

  “Don’t freak out. There’s no stains on the rug. Sierra didn’t have to use her sword. Mr. Anderson’s suggestion worked! Dispelling magic turns them off.” Sophia smiles. “Easy.”

  I crouch to wipe gore off my blade on a dead guy’s sweat pants. “Yeah. They’re basically remote-control toys. You’re shutting down the signal so they go back to being ordinary cadavers. The greatest crime here is someone wasted new clothes on walking corpses.”

  “I’m glad they did… this would have been ten times more horrible if we had to fight a hoard of naked zombies.” Mom shudders.

  Both of my sisters chime, “Eww!” simultaneously.

  “Some of them still have ID bracelets.” Dad holds up an arm. Yes, it’s still attached to a body on the ground. “They raided a morgue this time.”

  “Oh, Blix lit one on fire,” says Sophia, “but the curtains are out now.”

  A sheepish imp warble comes from deeper inside the house.

  Mom points at the burning patches. “What is going on? Where did that fire come from?”

  Sam appears in the doorway beside Sophia. He looks like he’s expecting to get in a ton of trouble. “It’s Max.”

  “Max?” asks everyone at the same time.

  “He’s my friend.” Sam forces a big smile. “Please don’t be mad.”

  Mom and Dad exchange an ‘oh, what now’ glance.

  33

  Sorta, Almost, but not Quite Canine

  Oh, the hellhound. Right. He named it Max.

  “I don’t see anything.” Mom stares at the burning body parts littered around the backyard.

  “He’s invisible.” Sam walks out to stand beside Mom.

  “Careful, hon. You don’t have shoes on. Watch where you step.” Mom puts an arm around him.

  “Invisible?” asks Dad.

  “Aren’t you a little old for an imaginary friend?” Mom rubs Sam’s back.

  “Allie, ‘imaginary friends’ don’t breathe real fire.” Dad cuts the weed-eater’s engine, leans it against the shed wall, and cautiously approaches Sam. “You didn’t happen to bring a dragon home, did you?”

  Sam chuckles. “No, Dad. He’s not a dragon. He’s nice.”

  A heavy grunt emanates from the back corner of the yard.

  Mom stiffens, looking toward it. “Samuel, what is ‘Max.’”

  “Umm.” The boy grinds a toe into the lawn. “He’s kind of a dog.”


  “Define ‘kind of,’” says Mom.

  Sam looks down.

  A minute passes.

  “Sam?” asks Dad.

  “Umm, he’s a…” the boy mumbles ‘hellhound.’

  “What?” Mom cups a hand under his chin, lifting his gaze to make eye contact. “Please don’t mumble.”

  “Promise you won’t freak out?” asks Sam.

  “Oh, this is going to be bad.” Dad appears to be fighting the urge to laugh.

  “He’s not bad. I just don’t want Mom to get crazy angry and not think about stuff.” Sam hugs her. “Please? Just be calm.”

  “Okay, Sam.” Mom exhales. “Tell me what Max is.”

  “He’s a hellhound… but it’s not bad.”

  “Hell… hound.” Mom’s right eye twitches.

  Dad glances at the yard’s far corner. “Is he housebroken?”

  “Jonathan!” Mom gasps at him.

  “Uhh, technically, yes.” Sam scratches the back of his head. “He hasn’t been in the house yet. But if you mean will he pee or poo inside, it’s not possible.”

  Dad seems to finally realize the girls are standing in the doorway. “Careful, you two. There’s broken glass all over the floor and neither one of you have shoes on.”

  “Why do you sound so surprised?” asks Sierra. “Shoes in the house is a class-A felony.”

  Mom flattens her eyebrows.

  “Drat. This is gonna be expensive.” Dad sighs at the wreckage of the patio door. “Sare, will you give me a hand hanging a tarp for the night?”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  Sophia gives off a faint cloud of light. She swipes both hands upward as if tossing a tennis ball for a dog to chase. A storm of twisted metal and glass bits rush into the air, swirling around for a few seconds before reintegrating into an intact sliding door as if we watched video of a bomb destroying it played backward. The sound coming from the metal frame as it bent itself back into place nearly makes my over-amped ears bleed.

  “Never mind the tarp.” Dad blinks.