Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) (10 page)

Sure, I already had Sparky and Soyla. But one’s a hormone on legs and the other a village idiot. I wanted to identify someone further up the food chain.  And by the way Sarah Arias rebuffed The Seven I was kind of certain her name sat near, if not at, the top.  Again, I didn’t know where the logic came from that convinced me that Sarah Arias refusing a beer would link her to the Blood Feud. Perhaps it was the old saying about never trusting a person who doesn’t like dogs or refuses to have a beer with you.

Once Sarah Arias drained the last sip and after she pulled up tight to the table in deliberate attempt to block my view, I lost interest in the conversation.  I mean, I’ve heard a thousand stories about loading cans and vegetables into plastic bags, placing those bags on a cart, rolling carts to somebody’s car in the parking lot, and loading the bags. I returned to my people watching.

You might think it a bad idea for a vampire to pay too much attention to people.  Probably is.  True enough, I feed on other humans at least four times a year.  Doesn’t mean I’m obsessed.  Besides, I’ve rarely killed, and I’ve already told you my bite will not pass along my condition.  One more thing.  I can’t stand the taste of human blood.

Remember the first time you got knee-knocking, commode-hugging drunk? I bet you still can’t get anywhere near the type alcohol that helped you get that way. And if you’ve never been inebriated?  Congratulations.  Me? I vomited for days after we ate the Roman vampire’s heart.  Since then the smell of human blood propels my regards out of both ends.  Still, I feed.  We all do.

As I said, I don’t usually kill for blood.  The part about our canines growing? True.  We make neat incisions and suck what we need.  Some go a lot further than that.  But the good news is that The Seven tends to cull those vampires.  Kind of hypocritical when you consider they ate the first few dozen explorers that came their way. But you can afford a little hypocrisy when you possess the muscle to back it up.

For some reason, Friday night isn’t the big deal in Germany that it’s always been in the USA.  Oh yeah, there are the same clubs you’ll find in any city, but Bad Homburg is a town, not a city. I spent a few decades in a rural southern town in the USA.  Friday nights were always celebrations.  In Germany, it’s just another day.  We paid up and at Café Aus Zeit and moved a few paces down to the Café Klatsch.

Klatsch means gossip, something the gang lacked by the time we found our new table.  Like I said, you only get so much material from a day of rolling groceries and it doesn’t take long to exhaust it.  We ordered iron skillets filled with varieties of hot potato casseroles. 

The seating lineup remained mostly the same as before except Sister Christian moved between Sparky and me.  The waitress served our casseroles and we ate like people who’ve been into their cups all night tend to do.  Complete silence except for J-Rod’s annoying smacking sounds and Dave Smith’s obligatory complaint about “them not having chopsticks here.”

Besides my full order of potatoes and ham, the only interesting thing to report happened when the Prince—I decided to forgive him for Sarah Arias ordering just like him—grabbed the beer off the table next to us and berated the waitress for bringing him a draft instead of bubbly water.  That took a few minutes of pure frustration to sort out.  Luckily the folks next to us seemed a bit further down beer road than us and never noticed the commotion. We ate.  We drank water.  We paid.  We left.

A left turn off the Louisenstrasse walkway would take us toward my apartment.  I guided the gang to the right, toward the Bad Homburg train station.  There would be enough time for them to catch the S5 to Frankfurt and then the S9 to Wiesbaden.  The entire trip would last about an hour, so though it was about double the time it would take to drive, the price was right.  And as far as vehicles went, we only had Sparky’s two-seater Jag.  Everyone wouldn’t fit and I was pretty sure it needed a new clutch.

Sarah Arias went her own way and I assumed somebody powerful enough to stare down one of The Seven could probably find a taxi to take her home.  She did offer the courtesy of a good night and thank-you.  She’d barely spoken a dozen words all night, drank only one beer, and didn’t order a thing at Café Klatsch.  A mannequin would make a more interesting date. But then again, it didn’t cost much to entertain her.

Figuring it always helps to have a super-human war machine along for protection, I escorted the crowd to the train station. Sparky tagged along too. We passed a couple of people on the five minute walk.  Like I said, Germans aren’t big on Friday nights.  They save up their party energy for all the crazy festivals that close stores at the most inopportune times. On the positive side, Germans use any excuse to roll out the portable bratwurst machines and beer stalls. Most Germans save getting drunk in the streets for the times
all
Germans get drunk in the streets.  It’s the way things are done.

We made it to the train station with one noteworthy incident, an unintentionally audible ripper from the Prince. 
If Sarah Arias could see him now
.  We crossed the broad courtyard in front of the station.  It was there I began feeling that uneasy tension.  You know, the feeling you get when it’s too dark to see around the corners and there’s nobody else around to deter most criminals with potential witnesses.  But what did I have to be afraid of?  I am a vampire, after all.

Temporary construction fencing funneled passengers toward the corridor of stairs leading to the various tracks.  The fencing also provided dark nooks out of sight of passersby and cars. Not a problem.  I didn’t see any passersby or cars. To reach the train platforms we’d need to traverse another jewel of impermanent German construction: a fifty-yard plywood tunnel.

I usually take the train to work so on most days I walk through the tunnel twice.  Occasionally the timing worked out so that I got to the station in the morning as one of the Frankfurt trains offloaded.  A lot of people cramming the tunnel.  Not now, though.  I sensed it was empty as we approached.  Perfect.  Like the sarcasm? 

Worn out from the evening’s social commitments—like a knife through the lungs, a rumble with a hot-bodied full-grown woman in half a birthday suit, and a cannibal pygmy who wanted to ruin my whole day—I looked forward to getting home, turning in, and doing nothing on Saturday.  Sure, “the things to think about later” represented a nagging stack of to-dos, but then the word later can mean different things to different people.

The something-is-wrong feeling gnawed at me as we approached the entrance of the plywood tunnel. The gang was mostly silent. Sister Christian gave the Prince the occasional “watch out here” that kept him from falling off curbs or walking into benches.  Even J-Rod muzzled his constant commentary. 

The gang felt it too, that uneasy feeling of exposure.  Dave Smith walked on the balls of his feet.  Probably thought it was how a ninja walked through enemy territory.  Or maybe that’s how he always walked.  Never really noticed.  Anyway, as I said earlier, the plywood tunnel led to a corridor that connected the tracks from underneath. There were a couple of machines next to the stairs in case you needed a ticket. And something was foul.

In the air.  Like urine, where the drunks relieved themselves rather than using the construction port-o-lets placed everywhere.  The odor smacked us in a rolling wave so thick the UN would consider providing aid after it receded.  For the love of all that’s holy.  I mean, it takes
additional
effort to go fifty yards into a tunnel to take a whiz when you could have done the same thing by walking ten feet to one of those portable johns. The idiot sots actually had to work to make things offensive for everyone else.

As tidy and orderly as Germans appear about everything else they accept public urination with not so much as a casual frown.  Might have something to do with their beer culture.  Crazy world.  I promised myself a return trip to this spot the next time I needed feeding. 

As I said, the tunnel ran about fifty yards.  What I didn’t say is that the tunnel curved enough you couldn’t see either exit.  I stuck my nose into my t-shirt and willed the cologne and sweat combo to overpower the strong smell of someone else’s ejected beer. That’s how I walked to the midpoint of the plywood tunnel—the place where the curve obstructed both entrances.  And nose-in-shirt was my pose when I got ambushed for the fourth time in a single night.

Chapter 16

Six of them.  Three from each end of the tunnel.  I don’t think the gang understood what was happening until the first blows landed.  I knew alright.  Four guys and two women. No time for strategy.  I attacked.

When it’s me against many I follow one rule of thumb.  Always the target most threatening of the group. Stops the others in their tracks while they decide whether they underestimated the fighting skills of their victim—dangerous—or if their intended mark is crazy—more dangerous. 

I hoped momentary confusion would give me an edge. In most fights that’s enough.  Real life fights are seldom the kind of back and forth rumbles that Hollywood favors.  Things usually run their course in a few seconds.  Once the big guy goes down the others tend to scatter.  But how to pick out the bull elephant in the microsecond it would take for me to cover the distance.

Easy.  One of the guys looked like he could dunk a basketball standing flatfooted while chewing a fifty pound barbell like a piece of gum.  He’d be my first dance.  I didn’t slow my preternatural sprint as I reached Colossus but instead I lowered my head and drove through him like a locomotive drives through dust.  I saw the man crash through the plywood wall and disappear into the dark beyond.  One down, five to go.

A scream, and I knew my bagger friends were engaged.  A fleeting glance identified David Smith as the source of the noise.  He stood in full ninja pose and yelled another samurai war-cry.  He’d just earned the name Watanabe, at least from me, and
if
we all made it through this thing.  I counted on Sparky to stall the attack and give me an opportunity to return to our group.  But Sparky was nowhere in sight.  Some people use their abilities to defend, others employ them to save their own skins.  Looked like Sparky needed to cut back feeding on French blood.

One vampire versus six—now five—humans.  Normally a no-contest slaughter.  Dozens of humans stood no chance. So why did Sparky run?  There’s never enough time to think in a fight but always enough time to deal with the disadvantages the not thinking causes.  That’s a long road to saying I followed my instincts and took the fight to the remaining attackers.  Perhaps I should have thought before I acted. 

My headlong rush into Titanic-Man may have resulted in the satisfying sound of broken bones, it also served to take me out of the fight for a precious few seconds. Another bit of new information dawned after a quick scan of our attackers.  They weren’t human.  411 valuable enough to have gathered before I acted like the bull in the ring.  Oh the guy I tossed through the plywood wall was as human as you or me.  The rest? No.  Demons.  All of them.  Kind of makes my previous claim of demon rarity look a bit stupid.

Whether it’s a half-hearted fistfight between brothers or the impact area of a great battle between two large armies, the fog of war settles in to help along the confusion. My enemy controlled the fogging machine and used my own instincts against me.  But who was my enemy? 

The question sounded familiar.  It should have, because the same thing crossed my mind each of the three times I’d been jumped that night.  And for the fourth time, I spared no brain cycles for thought.  Not thinking proved little challenge for me and I promised myself to work on changing that skill. Maybe they’ll engrave “Here Lies a Man Who Never Thought” on my headstone.

Demons are worthy opponents.  They attack in ways you can’t predict, you can’t kill them, they don’t exhibit any measure of rational fear, and you can’t trace a path of logic in their actions.  Kind of like a wife after the tenth anniversary.

For all my lack of intentional thought I knew my brain must be struggling to pass messages in the background.  Somewhere in our walk through the plywood tunnel the ammonia smell of the second of the two German national liquids transitioned into more a sulfuric odor.  My nose-in-shirt fart defense prevented the front part of my brain from processing the subtle change in smell while the rear part detected the demon scent.  I’ve already said, I’m no biology savant. 

But even without the rear brain engaged I had another clue so certain that even my smaller, alternate thinking cap could process without interrupting its primary mission. The remaining five attackers might have been snappy dressers, but their deformed, grotesque faces made them no competition for the less-prone-to-popularity and often drunk ladies that remained in the bar once the lights came on.  Demons are ugly.

I’ve spoken with other vampires who’ve tussled with demons.  Victory comes not when you’ve disabled them but rather when you escape without leaving too much of yourself behind.  That made my chicken friend Sparky a winner already.

I raced back to my friends.  Sister Christian was down but appeared alive and only stunned.  I could see her struggling to regain her feet.  Watanabe—the Harvard genius formerly known as David Smith—maintained his karate pose and let out a couple of more yelps.  Always helps to add more confusion.  I saw the Prince engaged in a fierce back and forth battle with a garbage can next to the concrete wall at the opening of the stairwell for track 3. 

The five demons ignored my friends and focused all of their attention on me.  Occasionally I do get to be the popular one.  Probably thought if they eliminated me the rest of my friends would end up starving to death doing stupid things in that plywood tunnel.  I needed to make sure that didn’t happen.

When fighting for yourself you turn every opening into a means for disabling your enemy or escaping.  Works well for normal humans, only marginally for demons.  But I was fighting for my friends. And that negated some of my unique advantages. 

If it were only me I’d pull a Sparky at the first opportunity and depart the fix with blinding speed. The demons would get a fleeting glimpse of my elbows, shoe soles and my butthole as I did the Usain Bolt. Tonight? I’m pretty sure that option would result in four open positions at the commissary.

My five new hellhound friends circled us.  Demons don’t follow human logic, but they do sometimes display human emotions.  I was pretty sure I saw a bit of gloating going on among the five but I may have been the way the low-wattage, environmentally-friendly German public lighting reflected off their ravaged complexions.  You
are
allowed forays into the harsh side of the PC scale when discussing demons.

Not sure if I mentioned that demons can speak.  Kind of creepy when they do.  You have the high-voiced demons and low-voiced demons and nothing in between.  Speaking must take more than a little effort for them because it always sounds like they’re straining on the toilet.

“Back away vampire,” the one with a face the length of a yardstick said. 

Did everybody know my secret? Now even my bagger buddies would demand an explanation or two because of Chief Long Face’s big mouth.  Long Face belonged to the low voice tribe.  Based on the level of straining involved to get the words out, I halfway expected see a brown pile on the ground behind him.  It might have improved the smell.

Long Face’s appearance came off as mostly human—if you liked horse-faced people and ignored the additional eye hanging from a sinewy string on the side of his head. But as long as he kept his trash separated into the proper recycling containers I don’t think the Germans would have noticed anything odd about him.  The other four?  Different story.

Imagine yourself in a European art museum.  Go to the section housing paintings from the middle ages. Almost all religious overtones.  Check out the paintings of hell.  Have a look at the demons frolicking about.  Bingo.

Long Face’s four amigos may have modeled for a couple of those paintings.  I considered asking them for their autographs but decided it might be awkward given they were there to kill us.  And as long as the demon mini-horde concentrated on yakking they didn’t move on to the next phase of whatever they intended, like maybe ripping my hands off and scratching their butts with my disembodied fingers, things were OK.  BTW, I’ve heard baboons do that ripping and scratching thing.

Back off, huh?  I’d been told to calm down and back off one too many times.  I saw Sister Christian make it to her feet with a little help from J-Rod.  I wondered if he’d give the demons a sampling of his fake Latino homey thing but his mouth was clamped in a nice oyster imitation. Other than one missing braid and a bit of wobble in her step, Sister Christian seemed OK.  Watanabe maintained the karate pose but I could feel his eyes bouncing between Long Face and me.  Don’t blame him because I wished I didn’t have to look at the other four trolls. 

But monitor them I did, and closely.  I refused to fall for the “me talky with you while
my
friends kill
your
friends” routine. Sparky gone, Sister Christian and Watanabe OK, and J-Rod doing his best to imitate a Latin statue. Where was the Prince?  I caught sight of him talking smack to the overturned trash can.  All of us still alive.  I needed to get the gang out of there in the same condition.  Didn’t have a clue how that would happen.  I needed more time.

“Back off from what?” I asked.

An honest question.  I really didn’t know what the demon wanted me to back away from or why anyone else wanted me to calm myself.  Long Face responded with a kind of hacking, barking laugh.  Was he related to Herr Doktor?  The other demons joined in.  As I said, either soprano or bass, nothing in between.

Once again I must have missed the punch line—or the whole joke. But hey, that’s life.  And I finally felt myself on level enough footing that I could began cobbling together an egress plan.

The far end of the tunnel led through the platform corridor to the exit that led away from town.  Not the best choice due to the extra underground distance.  And the parking lot on that side would certainly be deserted.  A perfect setting for some demon love. 

We could also climb one of the several sets of stairs that led to the train platforms.  Again, probably not the best choice because we’d be trapped up there until the train arrived.  Though, it
would
be fun to see Deutsche Bahn security challenge the demons for their tickets. 

That left the direction of our entry, back toward the restaurant and—FYI—back toward my flat.  I already knew that would be our exit, but I wanted to rule out anything else.  If we made the breakout back towards town it would mean four more unexpected overnight guests.  I thought about making things easier on me by letting the demons knock that number down by a couple.  Not really.

Even the best jokes can’t keep the audience enthralled forever and Long Face and his buddies appeared at the end of their levity.  They also started looking a bit hungry.  Maybe it was my imagination.  But imagination or not, I didn’t see any appetizer plates and the demon chorus looked ready for the main course.  I hoped Long Face could control them for a few more seconds.   

“A good answer,” said Long Face in his deep, strained voice.

“What?” I said.  “Do you think back off from what is a good answer?”

My bagger mates began to get the picture and they edged closer to me. 

Super-speed was out.  I would need to open room for escape.  Knock a couple of the grizzly uglies aside.  Once my crowd exited, I’d need to stay behind to hold the door closed.  That might prove painful. Perhaps not deadly, though.

“Oh yes,” said Long Face. 

He smiled and I imagined I could see the others salivating.  Well, that might be giving them too much credit because SOMEBODY—I’m speaking for the demon blocking the imaginary door out of the plywood tunnel—had no discernable face at all.

“Yes, indeed,” Long Face said.

Was he compensating for lukewarm mastery of the spoken word through use of repetition?

“Your refusal to cooperate allows us to proceed.”  Long Face grinned.  “And we are very hungry.”

One of life’s beauties is the opportunity to learn something new every day.  Demons could eat. So scratch what I said earlier.  Painful AND deadly.  If they licked my bones clean, that is.  I had the feeling this crowd would not hold back.

The conversation was going nowhere.  It needed a little jazzing up.  So I pivoted on my right foot and launched a supersonic fist where Faceless should have had one.  I felt whatever yucky muck comprises a demon and worried for a second that my fist would travel all the way through with no affect.  But something solid lurked in back and it provided enough leverage to send Faceless flying.

After that, everything came in blurs.  I assigned the remaining demons numbers instead of names because I didn’t get a sufficient look at any of the rest.  So Long Face and demons 3, 4, and 5 remained.  I would need to take out demon three and hold off Long Face and the others once Sister Christian and my friends were clear.  I hoped demon 2 would find something to interest him in whatever faraway place I’d just sent him and not return until everything was settled and I was griping about the additional houseguests.

I turned my attention to demon 3.  I feigned a swing at him with the same trusty fist that did the deed for number 2.  No doubt he would react to my threat after seeing his buddy sent packing. 

“Go,” I said and my own voice sounded as deep and raspy as that of Long Face. 

Sister Christian repeated my command and that got the bagging team running.  The only other time I’d seen them move that fast was when Captain Tickles let us all leave an hour early on a slow Monday night.  Sister Christian made sure the others were in full flight and then paused for a moment.  The shock I saw on her face broke my heart.  Just a little, though because I was more interested in a horde of demons who wanted to break my life.