It was incredible. What can I say?
Victor was totally entranced, or as totally as someone who’s perpetually wary can be. Victor leaned forward—Mindy and Mark forgotten, the other vampires forgotten—to absorb the experience. After all, he had Akiro to watch out for him. And Akiro was on the job, no doubt about it. His eyes never fixed on Bubba, but swept the room. Luis and Antonio had positioned themselves by the front door, guarding Akiro’s back, and the bodyguard’s eyes were doing a 180-degree scan of the rest of the club as he stood behind Victor.
As Bubba bowed to the applause, which was as thunderous as our small crowd could manage, Bill started the music again. This time we heard “In the Ghetto.”
Red tears ran down Victor’s face. I glanced over my shoulder to see that Luis and Antonio were rapt. The two nameless vampires were standing close to Bill, their hands folded in front of them, watching the show.
Ana Lyudmila was not a music lover, apparently. She was looking bored as she sat on the end of a bench at one of the booths close to the front door. I could see her over Mark’s shoulder. Thalia, who was about half Ana Lyudmila’s size, sidled up to her and silently offered a tray laden with more drinks. Ana Lyudmila nodded graciously, selected one, and took a big swallow. After a second in which her expression flashed absolute horror, she crumpled. Thalia caught the bottle as it fell from Ana Lyudmila’s fingers. The lethal and ancient vampire silently shoved the limp body farther into the booth and turned to look at the stage, standing so as to block the sprawl of Ana Lyudmila’s legs. The whole episode took less than thirty seconds. I had no idea what had been in the drink; some form of liquid silver? Was that possible? That little subplan had been contingent on one of the vamps being out of the line of sight of the others, and fortunately for us it had paid off.
One down. We wanted to take out as many as possible before the fighting even started.
Palomino, whose whitish hair and lovely golden skin made her a standout, worked her way close to Antonio by casual increments. She caught Antonio’s eye and she smiled, but she was careful not to overdo it.
My purse was on the floor in the tiny space between my chair and Eric’s. I dipped my hand down into its open mouth and withdrew a very sharp stake. I pressed it into Eric’s waiting hand. After a second of leaning on his shoulder to cover the move, I eased upright to give him room.
Maxwell Lee, who’d been standing by the door back to the offices, took off his suit coat and folded it carefully. I appreciated his clothes care, but it was like a signal he was about to take action. He seemed to realize it, because he settled on the edge of a booth after that.
While Bubba stuck to ballad-type songs he was entrancing, but for his next number he’d picked “Jailhouse Rock,” and somehow a tinge of sadness seemed to wash over the performance. Though the transition to vampirism had eased all of his infirmities, he’d still died in poor physical condition, and he still bore the marks of age. Now that he was singing a dancing number, the effect was slightly pathetic. I saw the little audience begin to lose their engrossment in the performance.
Switching the tone was a mistake, but one we couldn’t have foreseen.
I could feel Eric’s arm tense beside me, and then with the speed of a striking snake he leaned forward to clear Mindy Simpson to his left, his right arm rose up, and he swung in to stake Victor in the chest. As a sneak attack it was perfect. Eric would have hit the mark exactly if Akiro, with equally terrifying speed, hadn’t whipped out his sword and brought it down as Eric moved.
Mindy Simpson was doomed to be in the wrong place at the wrong second. Akiro’s sword struck her shoulder during its passage to Eric’s arm and simply hewed through it, her bones and flesh slowing the lethal blade almost long enough for Eric to escape.
All hell broke loose.
Mindy screamed and died within seconds, and the amount of blood was simply incredible. While she died, a lot of things happened almost simultaneously. As Mark was still gaping, Victor was trying to shove aside Mindy’s slumping and bleeding body, Akiro was trying to disentangle his sword, and Eric was ducking and moving forward to evade another slice of the sword. Eric’s arm was bleeding, but thanks to Mindy’s unintentional block, it was still operative. I stood and lunged backward to get out of the way, knocking my chair aside, and rammed right into Luis, who was launching himself forward to protect his master. I spoiled Luis’s trajectory, and we ended up in a heap on the floor. Fortunately for me, he was too intent on the vampire part of the fight to consider me at all dangerous, and he simply used me as a springboard to push off.
Not that that felt exactly good, but it wasn’t fatal.
I scrambled up to a crouch and tried to figure out what to do next. In the dimmed lights, it wasn’t easy to decide what was happening. A fighting pair close to the club doors proved to be Palomino and Antonio, and a small figure flying through the air must have been Thalia. She meant to land on Akiro’s back, but he turned at the last second—so incredibly fast—and instead she hit his chest, and he staggered. His sword was not a weapon for close fighting, not with Thalia doing her best to rip his throat out with her teeth.
Mark Simpson was staggering away from the body of his wife and the fighting vampires, and he was saying, “Oh my God, oh my God,” over and over. But he did manage to take cover behind the bar, where he grabbed a bottle and began trying to find someone to hit. I felt I could handle Mark Simpson, and I pushed to my feet.
Colton took care of it before I could get there. He grabbed his own bottle and swung it at the back of Mark Simpson’s head, and Mark staggered and went down.
While Thalia was keeping Akiro occupied, Eric and Pam went for Victor. There’s no such thing as a fair bar brawl. They double-teamed him.
Maxwell Lee very precisely staked Antonio from the back while he was struggling with Palomino.
I could hear Bubba yelling in an agitated way. I got myself over to the stage and took Bubba’s arm.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I said. So many people were yelling and screaming that I wasn’t sure he’d hear me, but after I repeated myself about twenty more times, he stopped the screaming (thank you, God) and said, “Miss Sookie, I want to get out of here.”
“Sure,” I said, trying to keep my own voice calm and level when I wanted to scream, too. “You see that door over there?” I pointed to the door that led back to the rest of the club, Eric’s office and so on. “You go back there and wait. You did great, just great! Bill will be back there directly, I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he said forlornly, and I saw his silhouette moving against the faint light coming from the opened door. I finally located Bill, who was picking his way through the combatants with his eyes on the prize. He took Bubba by the arm to steer him to safety, which was Bill’s designated job. I was proud to see that Bill had left one of the nameless vampires dead on the floor, already flaking away.
I was so intent on Bubba that I didn’t see Audrina staggering toward me, her hands on her throat and blood pouring from a wound, until she actually collided with me, causing me to go down on my knees. I don’t know what her goal was—maybe she was trying to go past me to the bar to get a towel to staunch the red flow, maybe she was just trying to get away from her attacker—but she never made it. She went down full-length on the floor a yard past me, and there was nothing I could do for her. I sensed movement behind me as I touched her wrist, and I threw myself away from the body just in time to dodge a blow from the bartender, Jock. He had excellent survival instincts, going after human women instead of vampires. Indira, her sari billowing around her, gripped Jock’s heavy arm and swung him with enough force that he cannoned into a wall. A hole appeared in the wall, and Jock reeled back, unsteady on his feet. Indira threw herself down to the floor, reached between his legs, and gripped. Screaming, Jock stomped and kicked, but Indira emasculated him.
I had a new “most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”
Blood poured from Jock, thick and dark, and he looked down in shock while Indira shrieked in victory. With sudden determination, he swung his clenched fists and smacked her in the side of her head. Indira went flying, and it was her turn to collide with the wall. She lay still on the floor for a second, shaking her head as if there were flies buzzing around it. Jock went for her, but I caught hold of his shoulder long enough to slow him down a bit, and at the moment he reached her Indira revived enough to launch herself upward, throwing a fold of her sari over his face long enough to blind him while she caught the stake I tossed to her and drove it into his heart.
Jock, I hardly knew ye.
I tried to do a quick evaluation.
Jock down, Mark and Mindy Simpson down, Ana Lyudmila down, Antonio down, Unknown Enemy Vamp #1 down. Luis . . . Where’d he gone? I heard a shot outside and figured that answered my question. Sure enough, Luis ran back into the club with a wound in his left shoulder. Mustapha Khan was waiting with a very long knife. Luis put up a furious fight despite the bullet wound, and he had a concealed weapon, too. He drew out his own blade and scored a cut on Mustapha, but Immanuel kicked Luis’s knee from the back and Luis crumpled. Rubio took advantage of the moment of weakness to drive in a stake. Though Mustapha said, “Oh, hell,” with great disgust, he bowed to Rubio. Surprised, Rubio bowed back.
Palomino was having trouble with Unknown Enemy Vamp #2, who fought like a fiend. Maybe Palomino was not as skilled a fighter, or as old, but she was bloody and weakening. Parker, who was evidently not much of a brawler, kept to Two’s back and repeatedly jabbed him with an ice pick, which was not too effective but obviously irritating. Two, a hefty vamp who’d been turned in his thirties, would heal up only to be punctured again. I’m sure it hurt like hell. Parker was apparently too scared to get in close enough to pierce Two’s heart. Palomino was too slow from her many wounds to immobilize him. Mustapha, thwarted from the Luis kill, shoved Parker aside and beheaded Two with a dramatic sweep of his blade.
Now Akiro and Victor were the only enemies left standing.
They both knew they were fighting for their lives. Pam’s mouth was bloody, but I couldn’t tell if the blood was her own or Victor’s. I felt the cluviel dor press into my waist and I thought of pulling it out, but the next instant Akiro managed to cut Thalia’s arm off. Thalia grabbed it as it fell and hit Akiro with it, and Heidi jumped in behind him and stabbed him through the neck.
Akiro dropped his sword to pluck at his throat, and I nipped in to seize the weapon so he couldn’t retrieve it. The sword was long, and not as heavy as I had anticipated. I stepped back to get it farther away from his groping hands, and just then Victor knocked Eric to the wall and pushed Pam down on her back, throwing himself on top of her right in front of me. He bit her neck, his hands locking her shoulders down.
She looked up at me, her face eerily calm. “Do it,” she said.
“No.” I might cut Pam.
“Do it.” She was absolutely compelling. Her own hands flew up to grip Victor by his upper arms, locking him down.
Eric was staggering to his feet, blood dripping from his head, his wounded arm, and his side. He’d bitten Victor at least once, going by his reddened mouth. I looked down at Pam, who was holding on to our enemy with everything she had. She nodded, turned her head to the side. She closed her eyes. I wished I could do the same. I took a breath and swung the sword down.
Chapter 16
Pam shoved Victor off and leaped to her feet. I’d been so scared I’d
kill Pam that I hadn’t been forceful enough. I hadn’t cut all the way through Victor, though I’d severed his spinal column. The sword stuck on the bone and I couldn’t remove it. Horrified at myself, at the sensation of cutting into Victor, I backpedaled and covered my mouth.
Pam yanked the sword out of the wound and decapitated Victor.
“Surrender,” Eric said to the gravely wounded Akiro.
Akiro shook his head. The wound in his throat prevented him from speaking.
“All right, then,” Eric said wearily. He grabbed Akiro’s head and broke his neck. The audible snap was deeply disgusting. I turned away, my stomach heaving while I told it to sit down and shut up. While Akiro lay helpless, Eric staked him.
And it was over. Victor and all his vampire attendants—and his human attendants, too—were dead. There were enough flaking vampires to change the quality of the air.
I sank down on a chair. Actually, I lost control of my legs and a chair happened to be underneath me.
Thalia was weeping over the pain of her amputated arm, but she was struggling hard against this display of weakness. Indira squatted on the floor looking exhausted but gleeful. Maxwell Lee, Parker, and Rubio had lesser injuries. Pam and Eric were covered in blood, both their own and Victor’s. Palomino walked slowly over to Rubio and put her arms around him, drawing Parker into the embrace. Colton was kneeling by the dead Audrina, weeping.
I never wanted to see another battle, large or small, in my life. I looked at my lover, my husband, and he looked like a stranger to me. He and Pam stood facing each other, holding hands and beaming through the blood. Then they simply collapsed into each other, and Pam began laughing in a breathless way. “It’s done!” she said. “It’s done. We’re free.”
Until Felipe de Castro comes down on us like a ton of bricks because he wants to know what happened to his regent,
I thought, but I didn’t say anything. A, I wasn’t sure I could. B, we’d already wondered what would happen, but Eric’s opinion was that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Mustapha was on his cell phone, which was about as big as a cricket. “Warren, no point in you coming in, man,” he said. “The deed is done. Good shot. Yeah, we got him.”
Parker said, “Sheriff, we’re leaving for home unless you need us.” The weedy young man was supporting Palomino, and Rubio was on her other side. They were all pretty battered in one way or another.