Hard Times (A Sam Harlan Novel Book 2) (11 page)

“We’ve got to get you somewhere safe,” Callie said.

“Mary Kate’s,” I groaned. “Take me to Mary Kate’s pawnshop.”

* * *

Callie went to get the truck and I leaned heavily against the steel door, my Bowie knife in my hand, just in case the vampire came back for round two. My heart pounded in my head like a drum solo and I felt like I might vomit again. I started sliding to the ground and soon found myself face first against the pavement.

Long breaths of cool air didn’t help; it just made me smell the garbage in the alley mixed with my previous vomit. I choked down the bitter taste of bile and attempted to stand, but the world spun and I collapsed.

Christ. I’m dead if the vampire comes back.

I almost laughed at the absurdity. Felled in an alleyway in Iowa, my gun ruined, with nothing but a silver knife and Sister Callie to save me. I half-expected the vampire to swoop in from above and rip my throat out. I reached out with whatever part of my mind it was that sensed vampires, but the buzzing was absent. The vampire had left.

The sound of tires on pavement and a door opening and closing brought me back to my senses and then Callie was kneeling beside me, her arm around mine. “Stand up, Sam. It’s just a short walk.”

“Short walk,” I said. “I can do a short walk.” I stood and took a halting step, but it was like I had forgotten the simple skill of walking. My left boot caught my right and I stumbled, almost falling, but Callie managed to lift under my armpit and take much of my weight.

She grunted with the exertion. “Keep walking. One foot in front of the other.”

I stared down at my boots.

One foot in front of the other.

I stepped, then stepped again. It seemed to take forever, but we finally made it to the edge of the alley where Callie had parked the truck. She steadied me with one hand and opened the passenger door with the other. I crawled inside and she slammed the door before I could fall back out, then went around to the driver’s side and got in.

I leaned my head against the cool glass of the passenger window and closed my eyes. The truck’s engine rumbled faintly, but it seemed to come from a million miles away, then there was the humming of tires on pavement. I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids were made of lead, and after trying for what seemed an eternity, I gave up and drifted off.

I awoke to a stinging slap against my cheek. Callie was standing in the passenger door, leaning over me. “Wake
up
,” she said.

“
Ow
,” I moaned. “What was that for?”

“We’re here. You have to get out. I’m not strong enough to carry you.”

I didn’t want to get out. My back hurt, my shoulder was throbbing in time with the pulse in my head, and I still felt like I could vomit. “Can’t I just rest here for a bit?”

“Just a few feet,” she said. “That’s all.”

I nodded. Callie was all I had left in the world. If she said I needed to move, then damn it, I would move.

I used up most of my willpower just getting out of the truck, but she slid her shoulder under my arm and helped me to the pawnshop entrance. She opened the door and the bell tinkled, then we were inside and Mary Kate approached, her face full of concern.

“What happened?” she asked.

“We were attacked,” Callie said. “Sam’s hurt. I think he’s got a concussion. Do you have somewhere he can rest?”

Mary Kate nodded. “There’s a couch in back, but it looks like he needs a hospital.”

A hospital?
“No—”

“We can’t take him to a hospital,” Callie said.

“Why not?” Mary Kate asked.

“We just
can’t
,” Callie said. “Get him to the couch. He should be fine if he can rest.”

I staggered through the pawnshop with Callie and Mary Kate’s help, past the room full of guns and ammo, and into an unfinished storeroom full of steel shelves that were stacked to the brim with pawned items. They led me to a dirty brown couch against the wall and eased me onto the threadbare twill cushions, the smell of dust and other unpleasant things tickling the back of my throat. “Water,” I croaked. “Can I get some water?”

Mary Kate nodded. “Of course.” She left and returned shortly with a paper cup. I sat up with considerable effort and gulped it down.

Callie left and returned with a handful of paper towels and another cup of water. She wet the paper towel and dabbed at the back of my head.

I shrank back at the sudden stinging pain in my scalp. “Ouch.”

“Hush,” she said softly. “I have to clean the wound or you’ll wind up with a bloody scab that covers half your head.”

Mary Kate watched in silence as Callie cleaned the blood from the back of my head and hair. My nausea slowly subsided.

“There,” Callie said. “I think that’s enough. You don’t need stitches, but it was a close thing.”

“A close thing,” I repeated. “Yeah, it
was
close. Even in daylight.”

Mary Kate shook her head, her lips pressed together in a thin line. “Where were you attacked?”

“Not far from here,” Callie said. “We were at the Mendozas’ restaurant and the vampire came in the front door.”

Mary Kate blanched. “They move around during the day?”

The chuckle escaped my lips before I could stop. “Lady,” I said, “you don’t know the
half
of it.”

“I’m
so
sorry,” Mary Kate said. “You’re right. I
don’t
know. Tell me.”

My pulse still throbbed in my head, but I closed my eyes and spoke. “Sunlight weakens them. Crosses don’t work, unless you have a certain lineage. Wooden stakes work best. Silver will hurt them. Put enough silver in them and you
can
kill them.”

“They’re strong,” I heard Callie say. “They’re fast. They don’t have feelings like a normal person. They are twisted inside. Their humanity is gone. They’re a walking, talking combination of want and need. They won’t hesitate to do
anything
to get their way. They’ll do … unspeakable things.”

I opened one eye and saw Mary Kate glancing between us, horrified. I cleared my throat. “They get stronger as they get older,” I said. “The one that attacked me in the alleyway must have been a vampire for at least twenty or thirty years. Maybe longer.”

“How in the world did you manage to kill one of these things?” Mary Kate asked.

“When you kill a vampire … you get a piece of their essence,” I said. “A part of what gave them their strength. They call it ‘the change.’ You get stronger. Faster. You heal quickly. Your aging slows.” I shifted, trying to find a position that didn’t hurt. “You were with Jack. Do you know how old he was?”

She shook her head. “He never talked about it.”

Callie took Mary Kate’s hand in hers. “Jack Harlan was born in 1868.”

Mary Kate yanked her hand back. “That’s impossible.”

“He spent his life killing vampires,” I said. “Think back. Didn’t you ever notice anything odd about his speech patterns? The things he talked about? Cultural references?”

“He didn’t speak much about current events,” she mumbled. “We never talked about those kinds of things.” She glanced down at the floor. “He
did
have an odd way of phrasing,” she finally admitted. “And sometimes he spoke about history like … like he had actually seen the events. Lived through them.”

“Jack wasn’t my grandfather, Mary Kate. He was my great-great-great-grandfather.”

She looked up, her eyes big and shining. “Tell me what happened to him.”

Callie’s head snapped my way. “I don’t think that’s a good idea—”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not? Maybe if you know, you’ll understand how much danger Elena is in. How much danger
you
are in.”

I almost told her how I suspected the vampire had manipulated
her
mind as well as the Mendozas’, but Callie’s emerald eyes caught mine. “Sam.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I was tired, my body aching, but I opened my other eye and turned my attention to Mary Kate. “Killing a vampire changes you. That’s what happened to Jack. He didn’t even realize it. He was trying to protect me from a vampire named Silas. Jack’s son. Silas killed Jack’s descendants. Every generation, he allowed one to live, to continue the family tree, then murdered the rest.”

Mary Kate took a step back. “I’m going to have to sit down.” She grabbed a stool from a corner and dragged it down the aisle of shelves, placing it in front of the couch. She sat and nodded her head for me to continue.

“Jack saved my life,” I said, “but not before Silas turned my wife and kidnapped my daughter. We were tracking them, but Silas was ready to turn Jack and make him a vampire, too. Unfortunately for him, he was too late. All the vampires Jack had killed? It got into Jack and changed him. He became one of them, but … stronger. I caught up with him in Indiana. He had murdered a family. A husband and wife. Their little girl…”

Mary Kate’s eyes widened in horror. “Jack would
never
do that.”

“He wasn’t Jack anymore,” Callie said softly. “He was
something else
.”

The pounding in my head was getting worse as my last remnant of energy faded. “I stopped him, Mary Kate. I put a stake in him before he killed again.”

* * *

“No,” Mary Kate whispered, her face frozen in shock. “Oh, no.”

“Yes,” I said. “He ordered me to do it. If he changed—if he became one of them—he
wanted
me to do it. And I did. I killed my own family, a man I barely got to know. A man who watched out for me my entire life.”

Mary Kate took deep, gulping breaths as she slumped down on the stool. “I can’t believe it.”

Callie took Mary Kate’s hand in hers and squeezed firmly. “Jack was a good man,” Callie said. “He did more to rid the world of evil than anyone will ever know.”

“What about your wife and daughter?” Mary Kate asked suddenly. “What happened to them?”

Callie turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “You might … feel better if you told her.”

Mary Kate turned from Callie to me and her face paled even further. “Oh, no,” she repeated.

“My wife was too far gone,” I said. “She wasn’t the woman I loved. She was a beast. She infected our daughter. Vampires call it ‘
giving the gift
.’” I laughed bitterly. “It’s no ‘
gift
.’ I killed my wife, and then I waited for my daughter to change and stabbed her through the heart.”

I left out the part about Katie Calahane, about how she died in my great-uncle Warren’s house in Decatur. I also failed to mention Henry Hastings and the Ancients. I skipped over the part where I used the Bowie knife to slash through Silas’s neck and cut his head from his body, turning him into a smoking pile of greasy ash.

And I damned well didn’t tell her about how killing my daughter crushed my spirit and replaced it with a desire need for vengeance and a desire to make the vampires pay.

Callie and Mary
Kate left me alone in the back of the pawnshop. My vision had cleared, but my head still throbbed. If I only had a sprained shoulder, I would count myself lucky. My wrist, still not healed, ached in protest where it had smashed into the asphalt when I fell.

Those injuries were stacking up. I really needed time to heal. The vampire was still out there, somewhere, and now two girls were missing—Elena
and
Olivia Mendoza. Girls with their whole lives in front of them. I
had
to do something about that. I
had
to make them safe.

Callie had folded my trench coat and placed it under my head as a pillow. I rolled to the side and took a piece of beef jerky from the brown paper bag that Callie brought with us. It was salty and chewy and I worked it between my teeth before gulping it down. My body would heal faster than normal, but I still needed lots of protein.

I need more time.

It was true, but time was in short supply. The sun was past its zenith and sunset was quickly approaching, and there were only a few hours of daylight before nightfall. The vampire would be stronger once the sun set. There was no way I could fend it off, not in the kind of lousy shape I was in. I tried to sit and promptly sagged back against the worn cushions.

I’m screwed.

Footsteps approached, then Callie and Mary Kate entered the storeroom. Callie bent down and stared into my eyes, twisting my head from side to side. “Your pupils are the same size.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

She held up a penlight and turned it on, flashing me in the eyes.

“Argh,” I said, rubbing at my eyes.

She flicked off the light. “The pupils react the same. That means you may not have a concussion.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Mary Kate said. “You should really get him to a doctor.”

Callie turned to glare at her. “We’ve been over this. He can’t. Trust me, he’ll heal. Hopefully there will be no brain damage.”

That encouraged me to sit up. “Wait a minute, I thought you said I don’t have a concussion.”

Callie shook her head. “I said you
may
not have a concussion. How do you feel?”

“Like I was beaten,” I groaned. “Badly.”

She managed a small smile and said, “You will feel better in a few hours.”

Mary Kate smiled reassuringly. “You can stay here as long as necessary,” she said.

I shook my head, and almost threw up as the nausea rebounded. “We have to move. The vampire could be anywhere. He was heading into the restaurant. We need to get back there.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Callie said, shaking her head. “Not in your condition. I’ll go.”

“Absolutely not,” I said. I tried to stand up, but couldn’t muster enough energy to lift myself from the couch. “It’s too dangerous.”

“I’ll be fine.” She nodded to Mary Kate. “I’m taking her with me.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Callie told me about her crucifix,” Mary Kate said. “She can fend off the vampire if it attacks. And, if not, I have this.” She removed her pistol, the same .38 I had seen the night before, from her brown shop apron. “You said silver bullets kill a vampire.”

I shook my head, which set off another round of nausea. “Sister Callie places a lot of faith in her crucifix. It
may or may not
protect her. And, that thirty-eight is only good if you can hit what you’re aiming at.”