Charming (24 page)

We weren’t as nonchalant as we were acting. I still had flecks of the door greeter’s blood all over me, and the billiard balls
smacking against one another were making Molly’s pulse jump. But our adrenaline was still up and our priorities were still narrowed and Sig had said that this Ivan was vain. We were making him look weak and foolish in front of his hive.

What I hadn’t considered was how similar a pool cue was to a spear, or how keen Sig’s eyesight was. False modesty aside, I’m a very good pool player, but Sig was in the process of methodically kicking my ass all over the table when I heard the doors at the end of the lobby open. Eight vampires came stalking into the billiards room.

Ivan was maybe five foot six, and at first glance he looked more human than most old vampires manage. His skin looked like it was in the beginning stages of a bad sunburn, but that was because he was wearing makeup to cover a complexion the color of fish belly. His black hair was an expensive toupee, and I only knew that because I could smell the glue. He was wearing a light-blue silk suit over a black T-shirt, and I could tell that he wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest. He was one of the few vampires in the room who weren’t. Most of Ivan’s followers were wearing Kevlar vests over bare pale concave chests, and jeans, sweat pants, or shorts.

Ivan had lost honor and face, and his going without a vest was a declaration of courage and power. Native American warriors would have called what he was doing counting coup. The only other vampire not wearing a vest was the lone female, one who was recently enough turned that her complexion was still an unbroken deep black despite a lack of any recent exposure to sunlight.

The human females hadn’t worn Kevlar either. Sig had said that Ivan was old, and it’s weird the way sexism can play out even among supernaturals. Ivan probably resented that the most powerful vampire leaders tend to be female. Maybe his
being a strip club owner wasn’t just a strategy for luring blood donors; maybe he had issues with women.

In any case, Ivan’s hive was flowing into the room around him like water around a rock. Except for Ivan, all the vampires were armed, some with handguns, some with butcher knives, one with a fire ax and one with a pump-action shotgun.

Someone growled a low rumbling sound that was both a warning and an expression of outraged disgust. Oh wait, that was me.

We all stared at one another.

“What do you have to tell me that’s worth the lives of three of my followers?” Ivan demanded, except it really came out “Whut dew yew hayuv ta tayell meuh thauht’s wuth thuh lahves of threeuh of mah followuhs?”

Ivan’s accent was pure Louisiana. So he was probably a refugee or survivor of the New Orleans conflict between knights and vampires.

“Ah pay hayulth insurance for those humans,” Ivan continued. “Do yew have any ideuh whut a rectal pain it’s goin’ ta be coverin’ theuh deaths up?”

Sig straightened up at the long end of the table and leaned on her pool cue. “A vampire named Anne Marie Padgett is causing trouble and leaving your phone number behind. We thought you’d like to know.”

Ivan’s eyes narrowed. “Who the fuck is Anne Marie Padgett?”

If he was lying, he was doing a good job of it.

“Foxy face. Frizzy brownish-red hair,” Sig said. “Seventeen and slender. Small yellow teeth, not bad but she never went to a dentist. Used to belong to Steve Ellison’s hive.”

“Wears cheap perfume that smells like a peach barfed on a lilac,” I added. It was a detail that would stand out to another being with a sensitive sense of smell.

The only light that would ever dawn on Ivan was in his eyes. “That little bitch wuz one a’ Ellison’s blood cows. Ah told Ellison he’d be bettuh off breakin’ her neck raht then an’ theah. Ah almos’ did it mahself.”

He meant that Anne Marie used to be one of Ellison’s human minions.

“Why?” Sig asked.

“Because she wuz a lot lahk yew,” Ivan said. “No respect foah propah boundah-ries. You see humans lahk that sometahms. The only thin’ they want to do moah than die is kill. They get a sniff of whut a vampah is, and tuh them, it’s the bes’ of both worlds. They get ta die an’ kill at thuh same tahm. That girl would have fucked anythin’, killed anythin’, eaten, sniffed, or shit anythin’ ta be one a’ us. The little bitch wuz a starvin’ dog, an’ Ellison treated her lahk a tame puppy.”

“Ellison didn’t listen to you,” Sig said grimly.

“Maybe not about her.” Ivan clenched his teeth in a smile that made his fangs draw drops of black blood from his own lips. “Ah tol’ that mo-rahn he either had ta join me or stay out a’ Nohuth Carolinah, an’ he stayed out.”

“He’s dead,” Sig said with no ceremony. “Not undead. Disco dead. I take it you gave Ellison your phone number while he was thinking your warning over?”

This was a little too close to being interrogated for Ivan’s liking. He still had face to save, and anger was eating away at him like acid. Ivan moved closer to Sig and showed her his fangs. “I think it’s mah tuhn ta ask thuh questions. For stahtahs, whut are yew? And whah does yoah boyfrien’ ovuh theah smell like a dawg?”

“What I am is my business,” Sig said calmly. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

I’d like to think it was the shock of learning that I wasn’t
Sig’s boyfriend that silenced Ivan for a moment, but it was probably her impertinence.

I tried to use the pause to good advantage. “Anne Marie is a vampire now. She laid a false trail here knowing that if anyone tried to track her by e-mail, they’d come right to your door.”

“Oh, ah understan’ that.” Ivan’s voice dropped several octaves. Apparently he liked to speak softly while being a big prick. “Ah intend tuh have a discussion with that little tramp, nevuh yew feuh.”

“She’s trying to get her enemies to eliminate each other,” Sig added. “She wants one of us to kill the other.”

“Oh, ah know that too,” Ivan said. “Which is the onlah reason ah’m considerin’ lettin’ yew leave heuh alahve. Aftuh yew give me one of yoah humans, of course.”

“Not happening,” Sig assured him, holding an open hand out toward Molly. Sig might have been commenting on an oddly shaped cloud. Molly stepped forward and placed the spear in her palm.

“Yew killed three of mah humans,” Ivan said reasonably. “Ah only want one of yoahs as a gestuh of respect.”

“Go suck yourself.” Sig’s voice was flat and calm, but it was the quiet of sky before thunder.

Ivan looked at me. “Whut about yew? Yew strahk me as a lone wolf. Is this bitch’s pride wuhth dyin’ fo?”

“Yes,” I said.

The room went silent at that.

“People know we’re here,” Sig observed. She sounded bored.

“Ah’m sure that boy hidin’ behin’ the bah will tell me all about ’em,” Ivan assured her. “If ah ask him.”

I never saw the signal. One of the vampires who had drifted to my right started to raise a handgun. My sliding step turned into a lunge and my katana was in my hand and cutting his
arm off at the elbow before he finished the motion, the tip of the blade continuing down to slice open the straps binding the Kevlar vest beneath his armpit. I shouldn’t have tried to get fancy. I was using the katana one-handed because I wanted to hold on to the pool cue, and I could already tell from the sound the blade was making through the air that the strike was effective but not flawless without the guiding hand. The motion took my blade farther down, and though I was faster than my target, he was still fast enough that his right hip knocked my blade even farther down while he was stumbling backward, and then his backpedaling brought his right foot down on the flat tip of the blade. The hilt flew out of my hands.

I should have brought the shorter wakizashi.

Chaos erupted, but I couldn’t track all of it. In my peripheral vision I could see another vampire jumping over the pool table, about to land behind me. The pool cue was still in my left hand, and I shifted my weight onto my back foot and whirled the heavy end like a bo staff, sweeping it behind his feet in midair so that he landed heavily on his back. The shotgun he was holding discharged into the ceiling.

A vampire’s nervous system can handle a lot of trauma, and the one whose arm I had amputated wasn’t going into shock; he was turning and bending down so that he could use his remaining hand to pick up the handgun he had dropped. I flowed back to my forward foot and whirled the pool stick so that both my hands were on it when I rammed the narrow tip of it through the opening in his vest, underneath his breastbone and up into his heart.

The vampire froze, and I broke the top of the stick off over his rib cage. I flicked my eyes around and saw that Sig had impaled the vampire I had floored, driving the tip of her spear
beneath the Kevlar vest at his collar and punching it straight down through bone and heart.

A bullet from somewhere tore through my flank and glanced off a left rib while I was turning, but I didn’t have time to register it because Ivan was flipping the pool table over at me. I dove into a sideways slide that took me under the table, its edge taking off a piece of my scalp. At the slide’s termination I rammed my knee behind Ivan’s as my weight settled onto my right hip. I don’t know if you’ve ever been caught by a blow directly behind your knee joint, but when just the right place is hit, a four-year-old can make your leg buckle.

Ivan hit the floor on his back, and I was already surging to my knees and bringing the jagged end of the broken pool cue up while he was trying to find purchase for leverage. I drove the impromptu stake up through his heart before he could bring his hands back up or scissor his legs around me to stop me. A severed head flew over us, dripping black blood over Ivan’s face while he ended.

The head was presumably Sig’s work. I didn’t have time to verify that she had unsheathed her sword, though, because the female vampire was bearing down on me with the fire ax. I released the pool cue and twisted under the haft of the ax, grabbed it with both hands, and used her downward momentum to roll her body weight over my shoulder. The upturned leg of the pool table was right there behind me, so I drove her body onto it as I flipped her to the ground. The leg broke through her back and erupted upward through her chest like some horrible birth.

I glanced over and saw Sig swinging her sword two-handed into the side of a six-chamber revolver that a vampire was trying to line up on her, and there must have been something special about her sword, because abnormal strength alone couldn’t
account for the way it actually broke the gun apart in his hand and exploded at least one of its bullets. Sig kicked one of the vampire’s feet out from under him while he was distracted by the loss of several fingertips, and she kept going with the motion, whirling into a full turn that brought her sword back around through his neck before he could regain his balance.

The vampire beneath me released the haft of the ax as she shuddered out into infinity, and I took the weapon with me to a vampire who was lying on the floor next to a dropped knife. His brain was trying to reroute nervous signals around the crossbow bolt jutting out of his forehead. My cracked rib complained, but I was ready for the pain and swung the ax, taking the vampire’s head off at the neck.

Across the room another vampire was pinned flat against the wall by the sheer force of whatever was emanating from Molly’s cross. He was still holding a gun, but his hand was flat against the wall, head turned to the side, his mouth actually peeled backward so that his left fangs were bared. He looked like he was on one of those cylindrical amusement park rides that spin people around so fast that they’re pinned to the walls by momentum. The vampire couldn’t even raise his hand to stop me when I swung the ax a second time.

And then it was over.

19

I
never did find out exactly how old Ivan was, but the safe in his private room was as old-fashioned a monster as he was. It had inch-thick steel walls and a rotary combination lock, which was fortunate because I didn’t have the equipment for black hat hacking or auto-dialing. The lock’s wheels were serrated with false tumbler notches, though, and it was still a bear to crack.

It didn’t help that Sig kept talking at random intervals. Molly was blessing the humans we’d killed, and Andro was off somewhere talking to Stanislav on his cell phone.