The Vampire's Revenge (17 page)

“They told me to steer the boat while they slept. While they were dead to the world, I set the cruiser on auto, put together the bomb, then took it back to the engine compartment and set it up.”

“I see,” I said. Something about his story bothered me. “How’d you know how to build a bomb?”

He shrugged. “The Internet. After I placed the explosive device, I ripped out wires from the engine until the motor stopped.”

“Nice going,” I said.

“Thanks.”

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Connie said, extending her hand to Mole.

I made the introductions, explaining Mole’s background to Connie and vice versa. Mole looked her up and down. “Wow. So you’re the Slayer,” he said.

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Listen, I’m sorry for yelling before. It’s just that Diana, Ulrich, and Reedrek treated me like dirt, you know? Like their flunky or something. I’d really like to believe that they burned up back there.”

“Me too,” I agreed. “Until we know different, let’s assume that they did, but keep one eye open all the same. We can’t afford to let our guard down.”

“Sure,” he said. “Speaking of keeping your eyes open, you guys must be really tired. Why don’t you go below and get some rest. I’ll steer us back to Savannah.”

“I got some sleep earlier,” I said.

“I couldn’t close my eyes if my life depended on it,” Connie said, rubbing her arms. “Too much has happened tonight.”

“You’re the one who’s gone without sleep the most,” I told Mole. “We can steer while you go below.”

“No. I insist,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep for the death of me. I’ll stay right here. I expect you two could use some time alone even if you don’t have to sleep.”

“We do have a lot to talk about,” Connie said.

“You’re on,” I said to Mole. “Just call us if you need us.”

Before I’d had time to turn my back, I heard an awful avian screeching from outside the boat. Connie and I scrambled back on deck with Mole at our heels. A crow was circling the boat, squawking its lungs out. It tried to dive-bomb Mole, but the vampire ducked out of its way. The bird turned in mid-air and came back for him, this time spreading its tail feathers and crapping on the blood drinker’s head.

Mole let loose with a string of curses as he swiped at his head.

“Jack! It’s me, Mole!” the bird shrieked.

“What the—” Connie began.

The vampire on board with us—whoever it was—made a move to grab Connie’s sword out of the scabbard on her back, but the Slayer was too quick. By the time it occurred to me what was going on, Connie had knocked the creature’s feet out from under it, had one foot on its chest, and was holding the tip of the blade against its chin.

“Eleanor!” I said. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re supposed to be in hell, bitch!”

“Will somebody tell me what’s going on?” Connie demanded, not taking her eyes off Mole’s body.

“If you let me up I’ll explain,” Eleanor said.

“Watch her,” I told Connie.

“I’m watching,” she said.

The Slayer allowed Eleanor, who was now obviously inside Mole’s body, to get to her feet slowly, but she never let the tip of the sword move farther than a few inches from Eleanor’s throat. The crow lit on my shoulder like one of those parrots in the pirate pictures.

“How did you do it?” I asked Eleanor, trying to reconcile the fact that the ugly, bird-poop-covered bloodsucker standing before me had only recently been one of the most beautiful and desirable women I’d ever met. “How did you manage to save yourself from being zapped back to hell with the other double-deads?”

“How dense can you be, McShane? I’m a child of the voodoo blood, remember?”

Dammit.
She was right. I
was
dense. I should have anticipated that the spell the Celtic gods cast might not work on her. Maman Lalee’s powerful life force protected us Savannah vampires from all kinds of bad mojo. “When did she switch bodies with you?” I asked, addressing the crow.

“Just after the last time I saw you,” it croaked. “I’ve been watching her every movement since then. I didn’t know who or what she was.”

“Why’d you do it?” I asked Eleanor. “Why didn’t you just fly off to some happy hunting ground, switch bodies one last time with some hot young chick somewhere, and feed off unsuspecting victims to your evil little heart’s content?”

“Because of
her
!” Eleanor gestured back in the direction from where we had come. “I hate Diana so much, I had to destroy her. Even if it meant swapping bodies with the most disgusting creature I’ve ever met outside of hell itself.”

“Oy!” the crow said and flapped its wings against the side of my head. “That is most unkind.”

“Settle down,” I told the poor little guy. Then I turned back to Eleanor. “You still blame Diana for coming between you and William.”

“Shut up!” Eleanor screamed. “It was her fault—all of it! I wasn’t about to let her live after she took everything from me. I observed them from the air and took over their toady’s body. When I realized what they were up to, I went along, keeping alert for any way I could step in and thwart their plans. I would have done anything to keep Diana from getting that—that
promotion,
for lack of a better word.”

“And you saved Georgia and South Carolina in the process,” Connie observed.

“I couldn’t care less about the humans,” Eleanor spat. “I just wanted to see Diana burn. And I did!”

“So, what now?” Connie asked, lowering the sword slightly. “Are you going to Disney World?”

“I’m going any damn place I please,” Eleanor said. “During the split second I was switching bodies with that nauseating little vampire, I tapped into all his knowledge. I now know everything he knew about the old lords and what Olivia and her coven intend. Knowledge is power, but I’m not finished arming myself yet. There’s only one more thing left to make myself unconquerable and get back the beauty I am so accustomed to possessing.”

Suddenly two things occurred to me. First, I was troubled by the fact that Connie had let her guard down by lowering the sword, if only a little. Second, something that had been bothering the back of my mind had worked its way to the brain’s front burner. What had Eleanor said when she had first taken the body of the crow, right after swapping bodies with Ginger?
When the time is right, I’ll be back. You take good care of that Slayer, you hear?

Even as I was realizing Eleanor’s next move, I was lunging at her. But she was quicker. She drew a gun from the folds of Mole’s strange clothing and shot me in the chest.

Thirteen

“I know that won’t kill you,” Eleanor said. “But all I have to do is slow you down while I steal the body of the Slayer.
That
will be my final move. Oh, and incidentally, I was lying about getting weaker each time I switched bodies. That happened to the others, but not to me. I kept my strength because of the voodoo blood. When I’m in the Slayer’s body, I’ll be invincible.”

“Stop her,” I ground out, trying to get to my feet, hoping my injury wouldn’t fatally distract Connie.

Connie looked down at me and I saw the Slayer take over. “You bitch!” Connie said, returning her attention to Eleanor.

Eleanor squinched up her face again, just as she’d done when she body-swapped into the bird. “I call on the power of Satan to seat my spirit in the closest living thing!”

“Like hell!” Connie yelled and took a back swing with the sword just as the crow flew at Eleanor’s head. “Take that, whore!”

I saw Mole’s sad old expression return to his own face as Connie sliced the bird in two. The bird’s beady, dead eyes froze into a silent stare.

“Jack!” Connie was at my side at once, helping me to my feet. “Are you going to be all right?”

“Yeah. Just help me get below and get this bullet out of me. It feels like silver. She thought of almost everything.” I looked at Mole, who had sagged against the handrail in relief. “But she didn’t count on our quick-thinking friend.”

“How do we know he’s really Mole?” Connie asked.

“Mole,” I asked him, “what’s the name of the barmaid on Tybee?”

Mole got a sappy look on his face. “Sharona,” he murmured.

“It’s him,” I assured Connie.

“But Eleanor would know the name of the barmaid,” Connie insisted. “She searched his mind.”

I walked over and placed my hand on Mole’s shoulder. “Yeah, but he wouldn’t have had that dumb look on his face if he wasn’t the real Mole.”

Mole agreed to steer the boat back to Savannah while Connie and I went down into the cabin.

“When we get back to dry land, burn that bird carcass,” I ordered.

“Yes, sir,” he agreed.

I sat on an ottoman in the cabin’s plush living area and let Connie strip off my shirt. “What will a silver bullet do to you, Jack?”

“It could weaken me enough to make me a lot easier to kill if it stays in long enough and it’s close enough to my heart. You’ve got to take it out. Are there any steak knives in that drawer over there in the galley?”

“Steak knives?” Connie gasped in alarm. “You expect me to take a bullet out of your chest with a steak knife? What am I, a surgeon? A really bad, like, steak knife surgeon?”

“Just stay calm. It’ll be fine. Go see what you can find to work with and I’ll just lie on the sofa until you get back.”

Connie returned with an oyster knife and two fondue forks. “I feel like I’m throwing a really grisly cocktail party,” she said fretfully.

“Speaking of cocktails,” I said, “it might make this a little less unpleasant if I was plastered.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll be right back.” Connie went to the small bar and came back with a large bottle of William’s better whiskey.

“Should I pour some on the wound before I start?”

“Nah,” I said, and took a drink. “It would just be a waste. I’m pretty impervious to infections.”

“What should I do first?”

I took another drink. “Stick your finger in the wound and see if you can feel the bullet.”

“Thank God it was a small-caliber pistol,” Connie said, tentatively placing one index finger into the hole in my chest and wincing.

“I guess this might be a good time to ask you if there’s still a part of you that’s in love with the idea of killing me,” I said. “And, ouch.”

“Of course not.” She looked at me sorrowfully. “I should have known you’d never want to hurt me. I wasn’t myself. You know that.”

The liquor burned as I more or less poured it down my throat. I closed my eyes, trying not to remember the awful night Connie was talking about. “I tried to kill you,” I said.

“You tried to save me. Save me from what I’ve become,” she said.

A monster like me.
I felt a warm tear fall onto my chest but didn’t open my eyes. “I did try,” I said through gritted teeth as she probed deeper into my chest. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. No, that’s a lie. I’m not sorry. I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“But now I’ve—I’ve matured, just like my father Travis said I would. I can work with the good vampires. I mean, if you want me to.”

“Of course I want you to.” I opened my eyes and started to sit up before I remembered what was going on. “Ow!”

“I feel the bullet!”

“So do I,” I said, lying back down. “Connie, it’s not as easy as all that. Iban, Tobey, Werm, Olivia and her people—you’re safe from all of us because of that prophecy I told you about. All the others—they’re mostly in Europe, but only a plane ride away—will be coming for you. You’ll spend your life hiding, looking over one shoulder.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

The liquor was hitting me fast and I could hear the slur in my own words. “My plan was for Seth to take you away. I should have known you wouldn’t leave Savannah right after the earthquake, even for your own safety. You’re a good cop. Seth could still take you up into the mountains, and he and his werewolf family would hide you and protect you from the vampires.”

What I didn’t tell her was that I hoped Seth would seduce her into thinking the baby was his. While she wouldn’t leave Savannah or give up her duties as the Slayer for her own sake, she might for the sake of her unborn child.

“You were going to give me to Seth?”

“Well, yeah. For your own good.”

So there I was, flat on my back shot and flat on my ass drunk, telling the vampire Slayer, her fingers two knuckles deep in my chest, that I was trying to give her away to another man. I fully expected her to ram the bullet right into my heart.

“I see,” Connie said, her mouth a straight line. “So Seth’s coming on to me was your idea?”

“Yes, uh, no. I mean, he loves you. He always has.” I swallowed hard. The words were difficult for me to say. “I knew he’d protect you in ways I can’t. Bad vampires are always going to be coming for me, too.”

“Do you know anything about Seth and his clan? His pack in north Georgia, I mean?” Connie’s voice was hard.

“Not specifically, no. I know about werewolves and shape shifters in general. Why?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter now. Lie still.”

I opened my eyes and looked around. I was still undead, as far as I could tell. “It could still work,” I said. “You could go off with Seth and let his werewolf pack protect you.”

“You should know me well enough by now to know I won’t run.”

“So are you up for the two of us fighting off the old lords and their little helpers?”

“We have to,” Connie said. “It’s the only way. I’m not going to go anywhere and hide.”

I felt like I’d come full circle, and not just because my head was swimming. Connie was back and she knew everything. Well, almost everything. She would go forward at my side, no matter what the future held.

I looked into her eyes. “Okay, then, babe. It’s you and me against the world. Let’s go get ’em.”

Connie gave me an odd look. “And we will. Right after I pry this silver bullet out of your chest with this fondue fork.”

It was a great moment, fondue fork notwithstanding, and I wanted it to be perfect, but guilt nagged at my conscience. If I was going to make a clean start with Connie, it had to be just that—clean. She’d accused me of having sex with Olivia, but I had to confirm it. I stilled her wrist in my hand and forced her to look into my eyes.