First Kill: A Dave Carver Novella (11 page)

Guinness rose, his hands curling like
claws at his sides. “I’m sorry, Nathan, but it’s not up to you. You
think I can let a bunch of teenagers run around hunting vampires?
You’ll die, and I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

I realized I was standing, too, and
that my screwdriver was in my hand. Nate’s switchblade was
open.

Guinness looked at each of us for a
long, pointed moment. “You sure you want to do this? I’m a
Council-trained combat mage. This won’t go well for
you.”

The waitress appeared suddenly, saving
us from having to answer. She looked frightened and angry. “You
gentlemen are going to have to take this outside, okay? Or I’ll
call the police.”

At that moment the air was
rent by a rapid
cracka-cracka-cracka-crack
and the
noise of broken glass and people screaming. It took me a moment to
place the sound, because up till now I’d only ever heard it from
the speakers of televisions or movie theaters.

Nate and Guinness flung themselves to
the ground, the sorcerer grabbing the waitress. I followed a moment
later, feeling sluggish and stupid.

“What the hell was that?”
I screamed, my ears ringing, my brain rattling like it was full of
screws.”

Guinness grimaced. “That, David, is
the sound of an assault rifle.”

The windows in front of the restaurant
were broken, there were bullet holes in the ovens, and the chef’s
shoulder was bleeding. Three men in business suits, a mother with a
toddler, and an elderly couple were crouched behind the
counter.

Guinness crept to the front of the
store, a long, thin piece of wood appearing in his hand. Nate
hopped over the counter and went to work on the injured chef with
the restaurant’s first aid kit. I stood in the hall, feeling
useless and unsure.

Guinness rejoined the group behind the
counter and said, “Six shooters. All with what look like
AR-15s.”

“What do they want?” the
chef asked through gritted teeth as Nate rubbed an alcohol pad
against the injured shoulder. It was a long, narrow cut—not a
bullet wound—and I guessed it had come from a broken shard of
flying glass. “We don’t have much money.”

“I don’t expect they’re
after your money,” Guinness said. “I suppose they’re looking for me
or my friends. The Art knows I’ve made my share of enemies, but
something tells me that they didn’t pick now to make their move.
Means they’re after you.” He was looking at Nate, sizing him up,
curious to see what he’d do.

Nate didn’t look away from the bandage
he was wrapping around the chef’s arm. “Is there a back
door?”

The waitress said, “Yeah. It’s in the
dining room.”

Guinness shook his head. “They’ll be
covering it.”

“Dave,” Nate said, “I need
you to check it. You okay with that?”

I swallowed. It was amazing—I’d faced
down the razor-mouths of vampires, but I was paralyzed by the sound
of gunfire.

“I know you’re scared,”
Nate said. “So am I.”

“Me, too,” the chef said
helpfully.

“And me,” Guinness added,
“and this is far from my first violent entanglement.”

“But I think Mister
Guinness is right,” Nate continued. “These guys are after us. That
means it’s kinda our fault that these people are in danger. We need
to protect them.”

I took a deep breath and nodded.
“Yeah. Okay. You’re right.”

And I headed towards the back door. It
was concealed behind a large print of a house on the shore of a
lake, right next to the aquarium. I pulled the painting off the
wall and opened the door. I pushed it open a hair.

Bang
!

That
sound I’d heard before—a single gunshot, and a hole appeared,
splintered and broken, in the plaster of the wall behind and above
me. If I’d gone any farther, my head would have gotten in the
bullet’s way. I slammed the door shut and moved the fish tank in
front. It was heavy. Hopefully it would at least slow them
down.

I missed my ax.

“Yeah,” I said, fighting
to keep my voice steady, when I’d rejoined the others. “They’re out
back, too.”

Nate and Guinness were squatting in
front of the windows, inches away from getting blown away. I
belly-crawled to them. Outside, I could see our
assailants.

Six men, sure enough, stood in a
half-circle in the middle of the street. All of them held mean
looking rifles. Occasionally, one of them would lift his gun in the
air and pump it up and down like he was shooting celebratory
fire.

“The cops will be here
soon,” I said.

Guinness shook his head. I could the
lines in his forehead and around his eyes now, which he’d managed
to keep hidden. “See the way the air shimmers?” He pointed at a
spot a few doors down from Legendary Bobby’s. The air was shaking
and waving, the way it does rising off blacktop on a hot day. The
shimmering was an ugly green-brown, like a toad. “It’s a sound
bubble. Nobody outside will be able to hear anything happening
inside. And, yeah, that includes phone lines. We can’t get a
message out. There’s no help coming.”

“How’d they set up
something like that?” Nate asked.

“Hard to say. There are a
number of foci that could do the trick. Or they could have a
warlock on the payroll. Hang on.”

Guinness pointed his wand out the
window. He snarled something in Latin and a geyser of blue-white
water flew towards the nearest of the gunmen. A column of fire
erupted from inside a nearby parked car and intercepted the water.
There was a small explosion, a smell like burning copper, and a
pillar of steam rose into the air. One of the riflemen fired off a
burst, but he missed, and the bullets peppered the wall of the
pizzeria.

Steam hung over the scene like a
mist.

Guinness settled even lower.
“Definitely a warlock. And I think that big fellow’s got giant
blood.” He considered. “Though his face is pretty lumpy…he could be
part troll.”

“Giant?” I whispered.
“Troll?”

Neither of the others heard me, or if
they did, they ignored me.

“How we gonna get past
them?”

Guinness drummed his fingers on his
knee. “I want you to promise me something, Nathan: I want you to
tell me you’ll stop this quest. I don’t care what you do, but I
don’t want you to kill yourself on this quixotic
mission.”

Nate’s face was surprisingly cool when
he said, “You know I can’t do that, Mr. Guinness. This is my
life.”

The sorcerer screwed up his face like
he was preparing to argue, but he stopped. “Fine. It’s frustrating,
but, gosh, it’s the best I can do, and I suppose I understand.” For
a moment he stared at Nate, then clapped him on the
shoulder.

Without another word, Guinness turned
to look at the chef and the waitress. “Are either of you
particularly attached to the fish in the aquarium?”

The waitress shook her head. The chef
said, “They were my ex-wife’s idea. Said they classed the joint
up.”

“And they certainly did,”
Guinness said seriously, “but the time’s come for them to serve a
nobler purpose.” With that, staying low and moving quickly, he went
into the back dining room.

Nate and I stared out into the picket
line of dangerous, passionless faces. “Are they thralls?” I asked,
remembering the vampire spy that had gotten Hector and Corey
killed.

“Possibly. Mercenaries,
maybe. I’ve heard that happens, too—vampires paying people to do
their dirty work.”

I shivered. The thought of someone
choosing to work for those monsters was terrifying.

“How are we gonna get out
of this one?”

Nate’s voice was toneless. “I don’t
know, Dave. I really don’t.”

Behind us, in the relative safety of
the serving counter, the others shifted. The baby cried. Her mother
tried to calm her. The businessmen were silent. Every once in a
while the waitress would let out a choked sob and the chef would
growl in pain.

Guinness emerged a moment later. His
jacket was gone. In its place was a strange cloth bandolier.
Hanging from hooks on the belt were the bloated, dried corpses of
the tropical fish. Each one had been blown up like a pufferfish
until they were about the size of a softball.

Guinness didn’t explain, just looked
at Nate. “You sure you won’y change your mind?”

“Sorry.”

The sorcerer smiled. “I
can’t say I’m surprised—I knew your mother.” He shook his head and
drew his wand. “Listen, Nathan, David: I
had
heard about the vampires in the
Bronx. I’ve been looking into it and I know it looks random, but
it’s not. They’re organized, more organized than I’ve ever seen on
this side of the Atlantic. I think they have a leader, someone
calling the shots. Something big is happening here.” He pulled from
his pocket a piece of paper and there was writing on it, in flowing
ink letters. “This is a list of addresses that could be concealing
vampire nests. Take it. Take it and find them.

“I’d go with you, but…” He
looked out the window, his gaze vaguely upward. “I expect I’m going
to be a bit preoccupied. It’s gonna be up to you, okay? You’ll have
to stop them.”

He let out a puff of air, spun around
and before anyone could say anything, he was out the
door.

The waitress wailed. “Where’s he
going? What’s happening?”

“Ma’am,” I said, “just
stay low and follow our lead. We’ll get you out of here.” I looked
at Nate to see if he felt any more confident than I did. It was
hard to say, but I doubt he had much more faith.

Outside, Guinness strode across the
blacktop, his hands at his sides like a gunslinger. Three of the
shooters opened up. The air in front of Guinness shook, and the
bullets fell, crushed, to the ground. He pulled one of the dead
fish from his bandolier, squeezed it like a stress ball, and threw
it.

The fish, a bright orange clownfish,
landed at the feet of the biggest gunman, the one that might be a
giant. The big man looked down and then back up smirking at the
absurd ineffectiveness.

And then the fish exploded. Bright
orange flames whipped into the air. It looked and felt like
fire—the heat was astonishing, even from yards away—but it behaved
like water. The shooter’s hair caught fire, as did his clothes. He
screamed. The fire trickled along the ground. A second gunman leapt
back, but not fast enough to avoid the flame. He flung his weapon
to the ground and stopped, dropped, and rolled. It didn’t help. The
fire consumed him, then continued to pace along the street,
capturing other gunmen in its wake.

Guinness pulled another fish-grenade
free and lobbed it at the car where the fire that had blocked his
water had come from. This fish exploded into a huge, green bubble,
which trapped the car like a mosquito in amber.

The other gunmen opened, jammed new
clips into their rifles and fired madly. None of the bullets seemed
to penetrate the invisible shield that hung around
Guinness.

Nate shook me. “We gotta go.
Now.”

We arranged the inhabitants of the
pizzeria into a single-file line. Each person put one hand on the
back of the shoulder in front of them, with Nate in the lead. He
activated the stone on his watchband and, suddenly all eleven of us
became, if not invisible, at least really difficult to notice. We
walked out of the store as if we had the cover of night, and, with
the sounds of gunfire and screaming behind us, retreated from the
battlefield.

We passed through the ugly green
bubble like it was empty air and stepped out into the humid,
stifling air of late-afternoon Harlem. Immediately, I felt
something crawling across my skin, scratching like the legs of some
cosmic insect, only it seemed to affect every inch of my body at
once, including the insides. Looking over my shoulder I saw there
was hole in the sound bubble, and that it was widening. The steady,
rhythmic pounding of gunfire could be heard now, punctuated with
screams of pain and the occasional explosion. The air smelled like
smoke, thickly and weirdly, like a candle run amok, something that
I couldn’t quite place.

The itching passed.

The bubble was shrinking, retracting
into the sky like someone up there was reeling in a fishing line.
The weaker the bubble became, the stronger the sounds from the
other side got. The battle still raged, and in a moment, we could
see clearly for ourselves.

Felix Guinness stood in the middle of
the street. Four cars, which had parked at the curb had been pulled
away and arranged in a square around him. He crouched, using the
cars as cover.

The shooters had spread out,
surrounding the makeshift fort. I couldn’t imagine how Guinness
would get out of this.

Occasionally, the sorcerer would poke
his head out from behind a bullet-ridden fender or hood and lob
another fish-grenade. But there mercenaries were pros, apparently,
and they’d adapted: Guinness’s grenades had short range and as long
as they stayed away from them, they could remain
unburned.