The Vampire's Revenge (30 page)

“With what?” Rennie asked, alarmed.

“Pointy sticks. Y’all are going vampire hunting.”

“Say what?”

“Diana and Will have got me pinned down in here, but they don’t know that I know they’re out there. What I need for y’all to do is create a diversion, but be ready if they come at you. They’re dangerous, so be careful, but there are more of y’all than there is of them so watch one another’s backs. I’m going to be ready to fly out of here and then I’m going to try my damnedest to kill both of them.”

“I got it, Jack.”

“Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.”

“Yeah, you do. But you know what I want.”

“Consider it done, man.”

“See you in ten minutes.”

I went to the door and listened, but I couldn’t hear anything unusual. Why hadn’t I installed some kind of peepholes out of the same material William had installed in his boats? At least I had a second way out installed in the back, but I still felt like a sitting duck. There wasn’t much I could do but sit tight and wait for the sun to go down and the boys to show up.

I dialed Werm’s cell phone. It rang for a long time before he answered. “Yeah?” he said, clearing his throat.

“It’s Jack. Look, I’m in some trouble and I wanted you to know what’s going on.”

“What’s happening?”

“Well, Diana and Will have me trapped in the mini warehouse.”

“Will’s back? Holy crap!”

“Yeah. I had to tell him Connie killed his father and he’s pissed. I’ve called Rennie and the guys to come over here with some stakes and give me a hand. They ought to make it here by sunset,” I said, glancing over at the wall clock. “If they do I’ll be fine.”

“Look, I’ll head over as soon as it’s dark.”

“No! I don’t want you anywhere near this place. I—I just wanted you to know what was happening. You know?” I actually just wanted to hear his voice but that sounded kind of gay.

“I don’t know what to say, Jack. I feel so helpless.”

“It’s going to be okay. But while I’ve got you on the line I just wanted to say I’m sorry for not doing more to protect you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like I should have done more to scare you away when you first asked me to turn you. If I had roughed you up a little maybe you would have given up and Reedrek never would have gotten ahold of you.”

“You’re apologizing for not beating me up?”

“Yeah. Or biting you just enough to bring you to your senses.”

“Jack. You couldn’t have discouraged me if you’d tried. Besides, I was only kidding that last day we were demon hunting. I
like
being a vampire. If I had it to do over again, I would have made the same decision. In fact, I would have come to you even earlier.”

“You would have? Really? Why?” I couldn’t imagine what the little guy was thinking.

“Because I want to be just like you.”

“Huh?”

“You’re the bravest dude I’ve ever met. You try to protect everybody, no matter who they are—from Eleanor’s prostitutes to the average Joe on the street who’s been body swapped or menaced by double-dead demons.”

“Did I tell you I just ruined Connie’s life by trusting her fate to an inept faerie?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“Like I was saying, you take the weight of the world on your shoulders no matter what kind of danger it might put you in, and you never give up, especially when someone you love is in trouble. That’s why you’re my hero. If I’d had a real brother I’d want him to be just like you.”

Now it was me who didn’t know what to say. So I just said, “Thanks. Uh, the sun’s almost down, so I’ve got to be ready.”

“Give ’em hell, Jack,” Werm said.

“I will, buddy. Count on it.” I hung up feeling lucky for the first time in days.

A loud crash and shout startled me into high alert. I unlocked the double-bolted door and opened it a fraction of an inch, earning me a searing pain right between the eyes. I slammed the door shut again, but not before I’d gotten a glimpse of what had caused the ruckus.

I realized too late I should have warned the guard at the front gate to expect company. When he was challenged, Rennie had evidently decided to save time and ram the wrecker through the ten-foot chain-link fence at a speed high enough to turn it into what looked like a huge wad of tinfoil. The next sound I heard was booted feet—lots of them.

“Let’s go, boys,” I heard Rennie say.

I opened the door again, more carefully. The irregulars, armed with broken-off broom handles and jagged shards of lumber, had formed a gauntlet on either side of the doorway, ready to stab any vampire who dared get between me and the wrecker.

As I waited for the sun to disappear completely, I thought how lucky I was to have such brave friends.

Then came the explosion.

Twenty-six

I came awake with a knifing pain in my neck and a constricting weight on my chest. It felt a lot like the night I died. “William,” I muttered. “Are you there? Where are we, William?”

A feline growl reached my ear from somewhere close by. Very close. My eyes flew open to see Diana sneering at me from mere inches away. Her fangs were dripping my blood.

How long had she been feeding on me?

I tried to raise my head but I didn’t have the strength. My arms and legs felt like they were tied down, and I knew that trying to get to my feet would have been useless. I’d lost so much blood I could barely see.

Someone kicked me hard in the ribs. “It looks as if your lady friend doesn’t give a toss about you,” Will said.

“You’re probably right about that,” I groaned. She had chosen a werewolf over me, after all. Even after unbelievably awesome sex. Maybe it hadn’t been as good for her as it was for me.

“Where is she?” Diana hissed.

“Even if I knew where she is, why would I tell you? I’m half-dead anyway. Just finish me off and be done with it.”

“Why did you call out for my father?” Will asked.

I blinked, barely able to see him. “I thought I felt him close by.”

“Fool,” Diana said. “He’s dead and gone, but it’s not too late for you. If you tell us where the Slayer is, we’ll set you free.”

“Then I really would be a fool. Besides, as I said I don’t know where she is.”

“Liar!” Diana bit me hard in the throat and I yelled in pain.

As she sucked my blood, I knew that soon I wouldn’t be able to speak. Then I remembered the explosion. “Tell me before you drain me—did my friends live through the bomb blast or whatever it was?”

Will stood over me while his mother fed. Sounding bored, he said, “I suppose so. They were setting up such a fuss they’d have to be alive, now wouldn’t they? Dead men don’t scream like that. Although one of them looked to be all crispy around the edges. Too well done for me, I’m afraid. I like my meat rare.”

Why oh why had I called the irregulars? I should have known a handful of humans were no match for Diana and Will. I was just convinced that if the boys could help me get out of my house without being ambushed I could save all of us. Instead they were injured, one of them possibly burned to death. It was just like I’d been thinking earlier. I was a curse to everybody I cared about.

“This is no fun,” Will complained. “You’re not even putting up a fight. Why don’t you do something interesting, like beg for your life?”

“No.”

“Right. Finish him off, Mum. I’m bored.”

Diana bit down harder, but this time I didn’t even wince. I was glad. I’d had a good long run, but it was time for me to go before I got anybody else hurt.

If Olivia couldn’t figure out a way to get Connie and Seth back, then at least they’d be safe for a hundred years. Maybe by that time the vampire wars would be over, and humankind would be entirely safe from the likes of us. Or the whole planet would be overrun with blood drinkers, and everyone would be doomed due to the loss of the prophesied vampire Slayer and her services. When I thought about it that way, I realized I had potentially screwed up the lives of everybody in the whole cotton-picking world—not just those of my loved ones, especially my child. Damn, I wonder what I could have accomplished if I’d been a
bad
vampire.

Will sighed. “Any last words, McShane?”

“Yeah,” I whispered with the last of my strength. “I knew William was wrong about you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Will demanded.

“He said you had the potential to be one of us.”

He blinked a couple of times and his face broke out into a snarl. “Like I’d want to.” He kicked me in the side again, but at the moment his foot connected with my ribs, I heard a whirring noise and all of a sudden a shiny spiky thing became stuck in his neck just to the right of his cross-shaped scar.

In the instant I recognized the ankh symbol on Werm’s throwing star, a bigger fork-shaped object came sailing end-over-end in my direction and struck Diana in the head with such force her whole body flew from on top of me, breaking her grip on my neck.

Will was prying the metal star out of his neck while he went to his mother’s side. With what felt like the last of my strength, I moved my head to see that the two shorter tongs of Werm’s sai had gone clean through Diana’s eyeballs and the long one was buried deep in her forehead. Instead of pulling it out she screamed and waved her hands.

Werm materialized at my side. “Move, Jack!”

“I can’t.”

Werm lifted me and put me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Since I outweighed him by a hundred pounds, he wouldn’t have been able to do that as a mortal. He might not be the strongest vampire I’d ever come across, but he managed to lift me and run just the same.

As we were making tracks I got an upside-down view of Diana and Will. He glared at us but didn’t give chase. Instead he tended to his mother. Each time he touched the sai to try and remove it, she screamed louder. It wouldn’t do any lasting damage, but it was still a pretty grisly injury.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“I got out to the warehouse as soon after sundown as I could. The place was a madhouse, covered with police and fire units. I saw Will and Diana carry you off. All the humans were running every which way and nobody tried to stop them. I turned invisible and followed. I stayed upwind of them, but I don’t think they would have smelled me anyway over the odor of the accelerant they used for that bomb.”

“What happened to the guys?”

“The paramedics were working on them. I was concentrating on where Diana and Will were taking you, so I can’t say for sure.”

I peered into the darkness but couldn’t tell if Will was coming for us or not. “Can you run very far carrying me? I’m awful heavy.”

Werm picked up speed to prove that he could. “You’re not heavy. You’re my brother.”

I must’ve passed out again, because when I woke up, I was in yet another strange place. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the hospital blood bank,” Werm said.

I was lying on a cot with an IV in my arm. “What’s this?”

“Since you’d passed out, it was the quickest way to get blood back into you. You’ve already had eight pints. You’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

“Since when did you get to be a phlebotomist?”

“I have lots of skills.”

“I’m beginning to appreciate that more and more.”

Werm grinned. “Thanks. Since it’s the middle of the night, nobody’s here in this part of the hospital. It was easy to sneak you in.”

The hospital. “Oh, hey, this would be the place they brought the guys, right?”

“Yeah. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up so we could check on them. See how you feel when you sit up.” He helped me to an upright position.

“I feel fine,” I lied.

“You don’t look so fine. Let’s see if we can clean up that wound. You look like you’ve been attacked by a rabid wolverine.”

“You don’t look so good yourself. My blood is all over both of us.”

“I’ll see if I can find us some scrubs to change into while you bandage that wound.”

I washed away the blood and taped a wad of gauze across the gash in my neck with the adhesive tape that lay on the counter. Werm was back in seconds with surgical scrubs. We shucked our clothes and put them on. His pants were too long and mine were too short, but he rolled his up and we set out.

After inquiring at a couple of nurses’ stations about anyone injured in an explosion, we were directed to the intensive care unit. The elevator of the ICU floor opened out into the waiting room where Jerry, Rufus, Otis, and Huey sat around looking dazed and drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups.

The only one missing was Rennie.

“How’s Rennie?” I asked immediately. Though all of them were bandaged and scorched-looking to some degree, they clearly were going to be okay. It was my partner’s absence that struck fear in my gut.

Jerry inclined his chin toward the ICU entrance, a pair of double doors covered with all kinds of signs whose messages all boiled down to the same thing:
keep out.

“He’s bad, Jack,” Rufus said. “Third-degree burns. And his immune system isn’t up to snuff because of the chemo he’s been taking.”

“Rennie has cancer?” Werm asked, shocked.

I nodded. “How long have you guys known?”

Otis shrugged. “A couple of weeks. He didn’t want to tell you, what with William’s death and everything else you’ve had on your mind.”

I groaned. “I’m so sorry I got y’all into this.”

“We couldn’t turn our backs on you, Jack,” Jerry said. “Not after everything you’ve done for us.”

“Yeah. What are friends for?” Huey said.

“Are you guys okay?” Werm asked.

“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” Rufus said. “You know we’re . . .” He looked around to make sure no humans had entered the waiting room. “Special,” he finished.

“Yeah. Special,” Huey said, wiping hot chocolate off his upper lip with his sleeve.

I was especially glad to see that Huey hadn’t gotten anything blown off in the explosion. The others could heal extra fast—maybe even regenerate limbs for all I knew—but Huey the pet zombie would have just limped along with his missing pieces, well, missing. Depending on what was blasted away, it could have been downright off-putting for the customers at the garage.

“I’ve got to see Rennie,” I said.