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He screamed.
I brushed the bracelet crosses across his hand. He dropped the gun. I caught it. A tongue of blue flame licked up his back. He clawed and scrambled, but he couldn’t reach the crosses. Burn, baby, burn.
He whirled, shrieking. His open hand caught me on the side of the head. I was airborne. I slammed back-first into the road. I tried to take as much of the impact as I could with my arms, but my head rocked back, slamming into the road.
The world swam with black spots. When my vision cleared, I was staring up into a pale face; long, yellow-white hair the color of corn silk traced over my cheek as the vampire knelt to feed.
I still had the Browning in my right hand. I pulled the trigger. Her body jerked backwards like someone had shoved her. She fell back onto the road, blood pouring out of a hole in her stomach that was nothing compared to the wound in her back. I hoped I’d shattered her spine.
I staggered to my feet.
The male vampire, Alejandro, tore off his shirt. The crosses fell to the road in a little pool of molten blue fire. His back was burned black, with blisters here and there to add color. He whirled on me, and I shot him once in the chest. The shot was rushed, and he didn’t go down.
Larry grabbed the vampire’s ankle. Still Alejandro kept coming, dragging Larry across the blacktop like a child. He grabbed Larry’s arm, jerking him to his feet. Larry threw a chain over the vampire’s head. The heavy silver cross burst into flame. Alejandro screamed.
I yelled, “Get in the car, now!”
Larry slid into the driver’s seat and kept sliding until he was in the passenger seat. He slammed the passenger side door shut and locked it, for what good it would do. The vampire tore the chain and threw the cross end over end into the roadside trees. The cross winked out of sight like a falling star.
I slid into the car, slamming the door and locking it. I clicked the safety on the Browning and shoved it between my legs.
The vampire, Alejandro, was huddled around his pain, too hurt to give chase right that second. Goodie.
I shoved the car in gear and gu
At the last second I realized she wasn’t going to move, and I didn’t have time to. We were about to test my theory about cars and vampiric flesh. Where’s a silver car when you need one?
Chapter 22
The headlights flashed on the vampire like a spotlight. I had an image of pale face, brown hair, fangs stretched wide. We hit her going sixty. The car shuddered. She rolled in painful slow motion up over the hood, and yet it was happening too fast for me to do anything. She hit the windshield with a sharp, crackling sound. Metal screamed.
The windshield crumbled into a mass of spiderweb cracks. I was suddenly trying to see through the wrong end of a smashed prism. The safety glass had done its job. It hadn’t shattered and cut us to ribbons. It had just cracked all to hell, and I couldn’t see to drive. I stamped down on the brakes. An arm shot through the glass, raining glittering shards down on Larry.
He screamed. The hand closed on his shirt, pulling him into the broken teeth of the windshield.
I turned the wheel to the left as hard as I could. The car spun out and all I could do was let off the gas, not touch the brake, and ride.
Larry had a death grip on the door arm and the headrest. He was screaming, fighting not to be pulled through the jagged glass. I said a quick prayer and let go of the wheel. The car spun helplessly. I shoved a cross against the hand. It smoked and bubbled. The hand let go of Larry and vanished through the hole in the crumbled glass.
I grabbed at the steering wheel, but it was too little too late. The car careened off the road into the ditch. Metal screamed as something under the car broke, something large. I was slammed into the driver’s side door. Larry was suddenly on top of me; then we were both tumbling to the other side. Then it was over. The silence was startling. It was as if I’d gone deaf. There was a great roaring whiteness in my ears.
Someone said, “Thank God,” and it was me.
The passenger side door peeled open like the shell of a nut. I scrambled back away from the opening. Larry was left stranded and staring. He was jerked out of the car. I slid into the front floorboard, aiming where Larry had vanished.
I was staring up at Larry’s body with a dark hand clamped so tight on his throat, I didn’t know if he could breathe. I stared down the barrel of my gun at the dark face of the vampire, Alejandro. His face was unreadable as he said, “I will tear his throat out.”
“I’ll blow your head off,” I said. A hand came fishing through the broken windshield. “Back off or you lose that pretty face.”
“He will die first,” the vampire said. But the hand vanished back through the hole. There was the sound of some other language in the vampire’s English. Emotion gave him an accent.
Larry’s eyes were too wide, showing too much white. He was breathing. shallow and too fast. He’d hyperventilate, if he lived that long.
“Decide,” the vampire said. His voice was flat, empty of everything. Larry’s terror-filled eyes were eloquent enough for both of them.
I hit the safety on the gun and handed it butt-first to his outstretched hand. It was a mistake, I knew that, but I also knew I couldn’t sit here and watch Larry’s throat be ripped out. There are some things that are more important than physical survival. You gotta be able to look at yourself in the mirror. I gave up my gun for the same reason I’d stopped for the child. There was no choice. I was one of the good guys. Good guys were self-sacrificing. It was a rule somewhere.
Chapter 23
Larry’s face was a bloody mask. No single cut seemed to be serious, but nothing bleeds like a shallow scalp wound. Safety glass was not designed to be vampire-proof. Maybe I could write in and suggest it.
Blood trickled over Alejandro’s hand, still gripping Larry’s throat. The vampire had stuffed my gun in the back of his pants. He handled the gun like he knew how to use one. Pity. Some vampires were technophobes. It gave you an edge, sometimes.
Larry’s blood flowed over the vampire’s hand. Sticky and warm like barely solid Jell-O. The vampire didn’t react to the blood. Iron self-control. I stared into his nearly black eyes and felt the pull of centuries like monstrous wings unfolding in his eyes. The world swam. The inside of my head was sinking, expanding. I reached out to touch something, anything to keep from falling. A hand gripped mine. The skin was cool and smooth. I jerked back, falling against the car.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me!”
The vampire stood uncertainly, Larry’s throat gripped in one blood-streaked hand, holding his other hand out towards me. It was a very human gesture. Larry’s eyes were bugging out.
“You’re choking him,” I said.
“Sorry,” the vampire said. He released him.
Larry fell to his knees, gasping. His first breath was a hissing scream for air.
I wanted to ask Larry how he was, but I didn’t. My job was to get us out of here alive, if possible. Besides, I had an idea how Larry felt. Hurt. No need to ask stupid questions.