by Rob Cornell
He nodded. I could see relief in his eyes replace the darkness. He had meant it when he offered me help, even knowing how it might damage his livelihood. Despite all you hear, there really were good peeps in our secret world. Too bad there were so many more who fucked it up for the rest of us.
“Can I ask you one more thing?”
“Don’t have to ask to ask.”
“This is going to sound weird,” I said. “Have you seen or heard of a group of vampires all dressed in suits?”
“Red ties?”
My stomach seized. “Yes.”
He slowly nodded while scratching under his beard again. “A couple came in here.”
“Recently?”
“Not long after dusk. If it was just the suits, I might not have thought much. And one of ‘em was a gal, so the suit and tie on her stuck out some. But that don’t mean much either.” He leaned his elbows on the bar. “What really made them stand out was what they were doing. Handing out brochures or something, like those religious types go door to door. But vamps sure as shortbread ain’t religious.”
Brochures? That didn’t make any sense. “Did you get a look at one of the brochures?”
Barry shook his head. “That’s the other odd bit. They only passed them out to the other vampires in the joint at the time.”
A cold bubble swelled in my chest as it clicked. Not brochures. More likely a mug shot. Of me.
“Any of those vamps that got a brochure here right now?”
Barry’s gaze went to something behind me. “Yeah,” he said. “The big guy who’s staring at you right now.”
I turned. The massive man in the black muumuu stared right at me. He had a phone to his ear, and he was saying something into it that I couldn’t hear.
Shit.
“You have cell service in here?” I asked, really, really hoping it was as impossible as it sounded. There weren’t any cell towers between worlds.
“New feature,” he said. “Don’t ask me how it works. A wiz set it up for me.”
Double shit.
“Thanks, Barry. I gotta bolt.”
I hurried to the exit, yanked the door open, and had to wait what felt like a century for the bricks to part and let me out. I stepped through the wall, and the cool October air chilled my sweaty brow.
But the pair of vampires in suits and red ties waiting in the alley holding pistols chilled me down to my core.
Chapter Seventeen
I tensed from scalp to heels, waiting to learn what it felt like to get gunned down in a back alley like a character in a sleazy dime novel. The Switch’s door clanked shut on its own. The reforming bricks sounded like a line of dominos going down.
The vamps who would claim bragging rights for murdering the Unturned looked a lot like how Barry had described, a matching set of evangelists going door-to-door, one female and one male. Except these missionaries had fangs, and guns, and no souls to pass through the pearly gates into the next life.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t give up the very second I saw them waiting for me. I tried to pull together a shield, but only stirred the air with as much verve as a fart. That was when I gave in to the inevitability of my death.
I was still drained from that stupid little spell. The irony was, if not for that spell, I would not have found myself at The Switch asking about Goulet, and therefore would have avoided this encounter entirely.
As it happened, the vamps never got a chance to shoot. Something dropped from the cinderblock wall behind them. A blur of color, including a shade of red I immediately recognized when Odi landed. The product in his mess of hair made the red locks shine in the moonlight. He didn’t make a sound when his feet hit the pavement, but something tipped off the pair, and they started to turn.
Odi had the first move, though. He sliced down with both hands like a judo chop and knocked the pistols out of his opponents’ hands.
“Wow,” I said.
I didn’t have long to be impressed. The vamps recovered instantly. They each took one of Odi’s arms and flung him back against the wall he’d dropped from. They pinned him against the cinderblocks and snarled in his face, making that metallic hiss undead bloodsuckers did so well.
Odi dropped his glamour. I hadn’t seen his vampire face yet. My first glimpse threw me off. I’d gotten so used to seeing him as a gangly, naive kid, I had nearly forgotten what he really was.
He matched the pitch of their snarls pretty well, but neither of them were at all intimidated. Much as Odi struggled, he couldn’t break free from their hold. To his credit, he did snap at the female’s face. An inch more, and she would have had Odi’s fangs through her nose.
For a dumb second or two, I stood there watching Odi try to break free. As his anger grew, his eyes flared a deeper and deeper shade of red. But more interesting than that, I could sense wave after wave of magical energy pulse out of him like a flashing beacon.
If only he knew how to harness all that power. He could have obliterated those fanged assholes.
A desperate—and a little dangerous—idea struck me in tandem with one of the waves of Odi’s power. I gasped as it came to me. But in order to make it work, I had to get to Odi.
“Odi, for crying out loud. Quit being such a pussy and fight like the vampire you are.”
Odi glared at me between the shoulders of the vamps pinning him to the wall. The glow in his eyes crackled like red lightening. I’d never seen that with any other bloodsucker I’d encountered in my years as a demon hunter. Which made me think my idea could work better than I first imagined.
The female glanced over her shoulder at me. She wanted to come after me, but she didn’t want to chance Odi slipping away from her partner.
I had to smile.
“I guess I should leave you, Odi. I’ll let Toft know what an epic fail of a vamp you were. Hopefully, he won’t be too pissed I left you to die.”
Odi roared. Not metaphorically. An actual roar that sounded like a dragon. And I had personal experience with a dragon, so I knew. That electric light in his eyes snapped and popped like the end of a live wire. The next pulse of his energy hit me like a hurricane gust.
I staggered backward and hit the brick wall I had come through minutes ago. The pressure of his blast felt like it could crush my breast bone into my heart. If it had lasted more than a few seconds, it might have.
I had it lucky.
The vamps got the brunt of the force. Together, they sailed through the air like a pair of rag dolls tossed away by a temperamental child. The female bounced off the wall a few feet to my right and dropped into the puddle of stale rain. Her partner flew right into the Dumpster, which rang like a gong on impact.
Three points!
A little shove like that wouldn’t keep them down. I charged toward Odi.
The light in his eyes dimmed. He turned his head back and forth, gaping. His anger at me evaporated as he marveled at his handiwork.
“Dude, did you just see—”
I grabbed Odi’s hand. “Sorry about this.”
Behind me, I heard the hollow thunking of the male vamp climbing out of the Dumpster. From the corner of my eye, I saw the female get to her feet. I ignored both as I concentrated on my touch on Odi’s hand. I took a deep breath and, with it, yanked on the magical energy vibrating through Odi’s body.
Odi cried out. With his vamp face on, the cry sounded like the screech of a hawk through a bullhorn.
I pulled as much juice from him as I dared. This kind of trick could kill us both if it went on too long. When I let go of his hand, he dropped to his knees.
The entire exchange took a couple of seconds at most.
A couple of seconds was plenty of time for a vampire to make a move.
The female grabbed the collar of my coat and yanked hard enough to lift me off my feet. My turn to go flying through the air.
I pinged off the brewery’s back wall with far less grace than she had. Something cracked in my right arm. I hit the asphalt, rolled,
then flopped face down into the puddle. The rank taste of stagnant water made it into my mouth. Pain howled up and down my arm. I couldn’t pinpoint its exact source yet, but I knew something had broken.
Still on his knees, Odi hugged his arms across his belly and gave me an Et tu, Brute? look. Or a Why the fuck did you do that to me? look, depending on how cultured an interpretation you might have wanted.
I rolled onto my back. The cold puddle soaked the hair on the back of my head.
I caught the female going for her gun. Strange call considering she could have pounced me and ripped out my throat in far less time.
Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I used the extra seconds to draw on what used to be Odi’s power, but that now had become mine. My left hand (since my right wasn’t working so well) ignited with bright orange flame. Its warmth rolled through me like a soothing sip of hot tea.
It was good to be back.
I hurled a fire ball at the bent over female as her fingers curled around the gun on the ground. The flaming mass struck her on the side of her face. The hit spun her off her feet while the flames engulfed her hair and crawled down the front of her suit.
She dropped and rolled.
I didn’t waste time watching my fire eat at her. I flipped my attention to the male. He had also gone for his pistol, only he had managed to recover his and had it aimed my way. He stood less than ten feet away. If he had the slightest skill at firing a handgun, he couldn’t miss.
Sadly, bullets traveled faster than fire.
Luckily, vampires move pretty fast, too. Even those who had recently suffered the magical equivalent of a colon cleansing.
Odi tackled the vamp low, driving his shoulder into gunner’s waist.
The gunner’s shot went wide, cracking off a chunk of the cinderblock wall. The sound of the shot buzzed in the narrow alley and set my ears ringing.
For a moment, Odi and the gunman tangled. The element of surprise had given Odi an edge, but now the older and stronger vamp took control of the fight. He wrenched himself free of Odi’s waist-high bear hug and kicked Odi in the face.
Odi’s head snapped back. He pinwheeled his arms to regain balance, but momentum worked against him, and he ended up flat on his back.
Which worked great for me. Now I had a clean shot.
I whipped a fireball at him. The ball exploded against his chest, shooting out a star of embers. The flames disintegrated his tie, the lapels of his jacket, and the front of his white dress shirt. His exposed flesh bubbled and popped and blackened.
He dropped to his ass, but clung to his pistol. He sneered at me through the flames burning away his suit and scorching his skin underneath. Tough bastard.
Without the ability to prop myself up on my broken arm, I had to do an awkward belly crunch to get another shot at him.
He beat me to the punch, firing a round that whizzed past my ear.
I threw more fire his way without any thought about how much power I had left. I didn’t have the luxury to worry about that at the moment. I had taken a sizable gulp from Odi’s pool. I had to trust it would get me through.
I nailed the vamp right in the face, the force of the fire bolt enough to cave in the front of his skull and smolder within the cavity. He fell onto his back and went still. A few seconds later, he burst into a cloud of dust and ash that slowly settled down to the pavement in a layer approximately the length and width of his body.
Footsteps scuffed the asphalt behind me.
I rolled up onto my knees, flaming fist at the ready. My heartbeat pulsed so hard my head throbbed.
The female vamp ground her heels at the pavement to scoot away from me until her back came against the cinderblock wall. Her gun lay in a puddle out of her reach, the gunmetal and water reflecting the moonlight. Half of her hairless scalp was burnt to black, as was her face, some of her skin flaking away and fluttering to the ground. One sleeve of her suit coat had burned away to her shoulder, exposing skin that sizzled and snapped like a slice of bacon fresh out of the skillet.
Didn’t smell like bacon, though. More like an overdone steak left out in the sun for a few days, covered in maggots doing their dirty work.
The flames had died, but she was still in bad shape. Vampires had an impressive rate of regeneration, sure. One of the perks of immortality. There was a point, though, where the level of damage left a vamp on the line between recovery and dust. There was no way to tell if she had reached that line, but I only needed her to keep her body together long enough to answer my questions.
I released the energy keeping my hand alight. The flame died. A sudden worm of nausea writhed in my stomach. I clenched my teeth to keep from retching. I was drained again. The last bit of power I’d taken from Odi had dispersed the moment I let my fire go out.
Cradling my broken arm, I stood and shuffled over to the crispy vampress.
Her head lolled my way as I approached. The fire had hollowed out the eye socket on her burnt side, yet the empty, charred hole still seemed to stare at me as viciously as her remaining eye. The lips on the side of her mouth that hadn’t been fused shut peeled open.
“Oh, dude, that’s so gross.”
Odi had come up beside me. His glamour was back in place. The kick he received to his face had split his chin, but the wound had already closed, leaving behind a goatee of coagulating blood.
I looked down at Ms. Crispy. “Tell me where to find Goulet.”
She snorted, but I think it was supposed to be a laugh. The working half of her mouth curled up in a twisted smile. “You’re looking for the Elder?” Talking out of the side of her mouth made it sound like she was doing a bad imitation of James Cagney.
“That’s right.”
“Good. He’s looking for you, too.”
Well, duh. “Tell me where he is, and I’ll go pay him a visit.”
“Okay,” she said, voice croaking. “He’s staying at the Manoogian Mansion.”
“The mayor’s mansion? Bullshit.”
She shrugged and looked ready to say something more, but the last sound she made was like a sigh as her body crumbled to dust.
Chapter Eighteen
Odi and I got out of there without a word between us. The gunshots may or may not have alerted anyone nearby. I didn’t care to find out. Besides, we only had another hour before dawn, so I needed to get Odi back to the Black Rose pronto.
I had to drive strictly with my left hand, while I kept my right arm rested on my lap. Every little warp in the road sparked pain from elbow to wrist. I suspected I had broken either my radius or ulna. I could have let Odi drive, but he seemed too distracted to concentrate on the road.
We traveled for a while in silence, neither of us asking the obvious questions we both had. I worried a little about Odi. He usually had no issues asking all sorts of questions. Half way to the Back Rose, I finally decided to go first.
“Your arrival back there was rather…fortuitous.”
He had been staring out his window. He turned to me, blinking as if waking from sleep. Maybe he was falling asleep. It was, after all, almost his bed time. “Huh?”
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“Oh.” He blinked a few more times, ran his hand through his hair. “Toft told me to follow you. He was worried you might do something stupid.”
I shook my head. “What a douche.”
“Hey, I thought you’d do something stupid, too. Turns out we were right.”
“That tango?” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “Not what I had planned.”
“Yeah, well whatever you did have planned, that’s where it got you. Toft says you’re getting reckless.”
“Good for him.” I clenched the wheel a little more tightly. “He’s your daddy. Not mine.”
“Dude.” He made a disgusted noise from deep in his throat. “Not cool.”
I eased my grip on the wheel. Sighed. “Sorry. That was low.”
“Way low.” He leaned back against the headrest and looked
up toward the car’s ceiling. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“We haven’t actually had the chance to share stories,” I said. I hoped he didn’t think now would be a good time for it, either. All I wanted was to get him home, get my arm fixed, and get on with making Goulet hand over Mom.
“I’ve been an orphan my whole life,” he said. “Foster home to foster home for as long as I can remember.”
“That sucks,” I said. I could see a touch of orange on the horizon. I gassed the car onto I-75, joining the growing flow of the typical morning’s commute into the city. Full-on rush hour wasn’t far off. I weaved through traffic, pushing over the speed limit as much as I dared, considering a traffic stop could lead to Odi’s demise. I didn’t think Fiona would appreciate vamp dust all over her passenger seat.
“Are you even listening to me?”
I glanced at him. “I’m trying to get you home before you get a tan.”
He sighed and crossed his arms. He roved his gaze along the dashboard, his mouth a straight line.
I was letting stress turn me into a bit of an asshole. Wasn’t like I couldn’t rush him home and hear him out at the same time.
“Tell me,” I said. “I’m listening now.”
He hitched a shoulder. “I’m not whining. I’m just saying. My parents dropped me off at an orphanage before I had a chance to remember them. Fine. Whatever. But now? The fucking vampire who turned me abandoned me, too. What’s up with that?”
Crap luck, as far as I could tell. Probably a hundred different legitimate and perfectly non-insulting reasons. Yet I couldn’t blame the kid for taking it personally. I never had to worry about having people around me who loved me. Which was why I was so damned motivated to protect them.
“You have Toft now,” I said, the words bitter on my tongue.
“You said he’s using me. If that’s true, he doesn’t count.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you’ve got me. We won’t be best buds or anything. But, like it or not, I’ve got you under my wing. That means I’ll have your back.”
He humphed, not buying it. “That why you sucked power out of me? I still have a damn headache. And I feel all…squidgy inside.”