Critical Failures III (Caverns and Creatures Book 3) (15 page)

Dennis cocked the shotgun and held it up firmly at Chaz. “Not another step!”

“Easy, man,” said Chaz, his hands in the air. “We can work this out.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to work out,” said Dennis. He sniffled, and a tear ran down his cheek. “Y’all cut my goddamn nuts off and fed ‘em to a bird!” His words choked out, leading into sobs.

“Aw man, don’t cry,” said Chaz. “Now you’re just making it weird.”

“Say one more word!” sobbed Dennis, stepping forward and thrusting the gun at Chaz. “Go on, I dare you! Say one more goddamn w—”

He stopped talking. As a matter of fact, he just stopped altogether. He stood as still as a statue, his mouth frozen mid-word, and his finger frozen on the trigger of his shotgun.

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Chaz stepped out of the path of the gun.

Dennis’s gun being held out so far in front of him didn’t leave him very well balanced for a person unable to control his actions. He started to tip forward.

“Goosewaddle!” cried Chaz. “Watch out!”

Professor Goosewaddle may have never seen a shotgun before, but the expression on his face said that he knew well enough that he didn’t want to be at the business end of one. He rolled out of the way.

When Dennis hit the dirt, the gun went off with a deafening, explosive boom. It blasted Chaz’s motorcycle all to hell.

“Shit!” screamed Chaz. “I haven’t even finished paying for that yet!” He looked at Professor Goosewaddle. “What the hell just happened? What did you do to him?”

Goosewaddle stood up and wiped some vomit off of his beard. “I cast a Hold Person spell on him. It won’t last long. You may want to relieve him of his rod.”

The shotgun blast was still ringing in Chaz’s ears, but he heard a small whimper near his feet. He looked down. A single tear ran down Dennis’s face.

“Relax, asshole,” said Chaz. “I think he meant your gun.” He took the shotgun out of Dennis’s frozen hands just in time.

“—ord!” Dennis said, and immediately broke down in a sobbing fit.

Chaz pretended he was familiar with shotguns, imitating the pose Dennis had used to threaten him. “Reach into your pocket, pull out your car keys, and get in the back of the car.”

Dennis did as he was told, crying the whole time. He crawled to his own squad car on his hands and knees. Once inside, Chaz closed the door behind him.

“What happened to the other one?” asked Professor Goosewaddle.

As if on cue, Randy barreled through some bushes. “Dennis! Are you okay?” His eyes met Chaz’s. “Aw shit.”

Chaz held the shotgun casually at his side. He didn’t point it at Randy, but he wanted him to know it was there. “Come on, Randy. Get in the car.”

Randy didn’t look like he could run anymore if he’d wanted to. He wasn’t in nearly as good of shape as Dennis, and his recent exertion left him a panting, sweaty mess. “I’m really sorry,” he said between pants. “Dennis put me up to it. We was scared y’all was gonna kill us.”

“I still might,” said Chaz. “Look what he did to my bike!”

The motorcycle lay on its side, a complete wreck. The shotgun blast had hit it in the rear. The tire was flat, the chain broken, what was left of the shredded muffler had fused into the spokes. Completely unrideable.

Randy frowned. “I’ll admit that
was
uncalled for.”

Chaz opened the door to let Randy sit next to Dennis.

Dennis leaned on Randy’s chest. “Hold me.”

“There’s powerful magic where we came from,” said Chaz. “If you ever want to have a pair of testicles again, you’ll behave.”

Dennis stopped crying and looked up at Chaz. “Truly? Do you really think there’s a chance I might –”

Chaz slammed the door shut. Maybe it was true. Maybe it was just false hope. He didn’t give a shit about Dennis’s testicles, but if it kept him in line for a while…

The drive back to the Chicken Hut, while uneventful, was probably the most intense six or seven minutes in Chaz’s life. He’d watched a vampire murder his girlfriend, but that didn’t even compare with driving around in a stolen cop car with two hostages and a gnome.

Chapter 17

Stacy sat at the bar just inside the front entrance of the Olive Garden. Tim had shown her Mordred’s Facebook profile picture, and explained how he’d changed since it was taken. Mostly facial hair and fat. Although the place was crowded, mostly with old couples and young families, there was no one in the restaurant that she could see who even remotely matched that description. She felt nervous, in spite of the fact that – or maybe because of the fact that – Tim had reassured her so many times that she had nothing to be afraid of. He and Julian had both exits covered, and the bird would follow the car when they left. Strangely enough, her nervousness was less about what this freak might do to her if he got the chance, and more like blind date jitters. After all she’d been through today, she deserved a drink.

“You here alone?”

Stacy whipped around. If this was Mordred, she might not have such a bad night after all. This guy was tall and handsome, with blond, wavy hair and a tailored blue suit. He was almost exactly the opposite of what Tim had described.

“Mordred?”

He gave her a shocked and exaggeratedly quizzical look. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but that one’s new to me. My name’s Brad Tanner.” He offered his hand. Stacy accepted. His handshake was firm.

“That’s too bad,
Brad
,” said Stacy. “Looks like you’re not the guy I’m waiting for tonight.”

“Can I at least buy you a drink until this Mordred fellow shows up?”

“I won’t stop you.”

“What’ll you have?”

“Surprise me.”

“Bartender,” said Brad. “Two Manhattans, please.” He didn’t shout, but he knew how to project his voice effectively, and the bartender acknowledged his order from the other side of the noisy bar.

“Right away, sir.”

“So how do you know this Mordred?” Brad asked Stacy.

Considering the freak show that she was expecting to walk through the front door any second now, Stacy said the most embarrassing thing she was likely to say all night. “I met him online.” Her face felt warm, and she wished the bartender would hurry the hell up with those Manhattans.

Brad smiled. It was just condescending enough to show that he recognized her embarrassment, and was enjoying it a bit. “You need to be careful who you meet online. They aren’t always who they seem to be.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Thank you, sir,” Brad said to the bartender, accepting the two glasses. He passed one to Stacy.

Stacy took a sip, savoring the boozy goodness running into her bloodstream. “Ah, that’s the stuff.”

“What kind of guy leaves a knockout like you sitting alone at a bar?”

Stacy appreciated the compliment, though she wasn’t thrilled about the term ‘knockout’. It sounded like something her grandpa would say.

“And at an Olive Garden?” Brad continued. “Sounds like a real class act.”

Stacy necked the rest of her drink. No point in being coy. “So says the guy chatting me up at an Olive Garden bar.”

Brad took her glass and held it up, nodding at the bartender for another drink. It might have been nice to run it by her first, but hey… free drinks.

“I was just here on business,” he said. “You want to keep a client’s business, you keep them happy. If that means suffering through some Chef Boyardee ravioli, then so be it.”

“And yet you’re still here.”

“One bar’s as good as another.”

After a few more Manhattans, Stacy began to warm to Brad’s forced wit and bravado. He wasn’t a guy she could ever date seriously, but he was good for a few laughs. She was four more drinks – and at least as many “amazing” Brad stories – in, when his well-practiced smile faltered. He was looking at the front door.

“Holy Mary, mother of God. What is
that
?”

The identity of the man standing in the Olive Garden doorway was no enigma to Stacy. He fit Tim’s description right down to the purple cape.
He really wore it.
To his credit, he looked like he otherwise tried to make an effort. His hair was washed, and the polo shirt under his cape was stuffed under his gut into a pair of jeans that looked like he hadn’t worn since two sizes ago. The poor guy looked as out of place as a kitten in a snake pit.

He clutched an old, black backpack by the straps. The patrons nearest him looked at the bag as if hoping it didn’t contain a bomb. It was time for Stacy to step up to the plate.

“Mordred!” she called out, breaking the silence in the room. She gave him a wave and a cheery smile. The booze had been a good idea.

Mordred let out a relieved sigh and waved back.

The other patrons, satisfied that this weirdo was the expected dining companion of a seemingly normal person, and therefore less likely to be taking out his frustrations on a cruel and uncaring world, continued their conversations.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” said Brad. “
You…
and
him
?”

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” said Stacy, trying to sound convincing. By Brad’s smirk, she could tell he wasn’t buying it.

“Well you two lovebirds enjoy your meal,” said Brad, setting a business card down on the bar. “Gimme a buzz if the date doesn’t go as well as you hoped. Good luck.” He winked at her, took what remained of his drink, and moved down to the end of the bar.

Chapter 18

“He’s gone,” said Katherine. “You can take your hood down.”

Cooper lowered his hood. “Thank fuck,” he said. “It smells like ass in there.”

As there was a big enough gap in the oncoming traffic from either direction, the two of them ran across the highway. Once they were safely hidden in the forested north side, Katherine morphed into her wolf form.

She almost immediately picked up Ginfizzle’s scent, which was weird because she hadn’t even realized she knew what he smelled like. But the scent was strong and unmistakable. The trail was fresh. She sniffed at the ground as she trotted along, with Cooper crashing through the trees and underbrush behind her.

The scent weakened as Katherine followed it. The scenario played out in her mind. Getting hit by a car had hurt Ginfizzle pretty badly. He’d spilled a lot of blood as he ran away. Then his wounds started to heal, and he dripped less and less blood, until he was completely healed. The blood had made him easy to track, but it wasn’t necessary. Faint as it was, she could still keep up with his erratic zig-zagging through the forest… until, suddenly, she couldn’t.

The trail ended abruptly. Katherine raised her snout and opened her canine nostrils wide, but all she could smell was Cooper. He’d just farted up a cloud of Arby’s and Funyuns. She turned her head toward him and growled as he came into view.

“What?” said Cooper.

Katherine didn’t want to waste any time, but she couldn’t communicate with Cooper in wolf form. She morphed back into a half elf.

“I lost the trail.”

“Oh,” said Cooper. “Well, shit.”

“Your fart overpowered it.”

Cooper looked down. “I guess I can’t blame this one on the dog.”

“I know it’s not your fault,” said Katherine. “But I need you to take a walk so I can try to pick him up again.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll howl when I’ve got him again.”

Cooper nodded, and trudged off back in the direction he had come from.

He was sensitive for such a big brute. Katherine guessed there was only so much a guy could take of people telling him over and over again how revolting he is before it started to wear at him. She pushed it out of her mind. Feelings were for the living. Once the fart smell had dissipated enough, she changed back into a wolf and took a long, deep breath.

It wasn’t just Cooper’s fart that had made the trail go cold. Even now, in his absence, the trail was dead. Ginfizzle must have turned into a bat and taken flight from here. But why? What did he have to flee? Maybe he wasn’t fleeing at all. More likely, he was on the hunt.

Katherine bounded forward another fifty yards in the direction the trail had most recently been pointing toward. It was all she could do. She stopped and sniffed the air again. There it was. His scent was weak, and mingled with that of another creature’s blood, but there was no mistaking it. She had him again. She howled into the muggy night air, and then bolted off after her prey.

The scene wasn’t hard to spot once she got in visual range. A few trees splattered with blood. An emaciated husk of a deer. It was a big buck, with blood on its antlers. Katherine gave them a sniff. Ginfizzle’s blood. The animal had put up a fight, but in the end it was no match for a vampire. Every last drop of its own blood had been sucked right out of it.

Katherine let out two sharp barks to let Cooper know where she was. He was still some distance behind her, but from the sound of crashing foliage, at least he was headed in the right direction. Ginfizzle’s scent was strong in the air. He was nearby. She’d find him, but first there was the matter of this deer. It wouldn’t do them any good to catch Ginfizzle if they left a vampiric deer on the loose. She tried to crush its skull with her mouth, but it was too big to get a proper grip on. She’d have to bash it against a tree. She changed back into her half-elf form.

“Why do you follow me?” asked a raspy voice from above.

Katherine looked up, and there he was. A scrawny, naked humanoid figure perched high on the branch of a pine tree.

“Ginfizzle!” said Katherine, trying to sound warm and comforting. It felt forced, but it was her only card to play. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Why did you run off?”

“You threw me through a window.”

“Oh, right,” said Katherine. “Sorry about that. I was just protecting Butterbean. I couldn’t let you eat him.”

Ginfizzle snarled. “That wolf cares no more for you than it does for me. We are the damned, cursed to wander in death. We are despised by the living.”

“Then it makes sense for us to stick together, doesn’t it?” said Katherine. “We’re all we’ve got.” If she could get him down from that tree, she could wrestle him down until Cooper arrived with the Bag of Holding.

“I’m doing just fine on my own,” said Ginfizzle. He pointed down at the dead deer. “There, see for yourself.”

“I know you’re strong,” said Katherine. “But what’s going to happen once morning comes? The sunlight will destroy you if you don’t have a place to hide. I know a place where we can go.” The thought only now occurred to her that the situation might have resolved itself if she had just left him alone.

“Where is this place?”

“Back at the restaurant, the place we slept today. My brother will keep us safe. He already bought some rabbits for us to eat.”

“I’d as soon dine on your brother’s flesh as I would his filthy, stinking rabbits. He’ll kill us the first chance he gets.”

“No he won’t,” said Katherine. “Tim may be a whiny little shit sometimes, but he looks out for me. So much so that I often take advantage of him.” She gestured for him to come down. “Come on, Ginny. You’ve got nowhere else to go. Let me take care of you, just through the day. We can help you find a place of your own tomorrow evening.”

Ginfizzle stood up on his branch and clawed nervously at the trunk. “Why do you care what happens to me?”

Katherine hugged herself, feigning a shiver. Her breasts squeezed together. From Ginfizzle’s vantage point, he’d have a nice view of her cleavage. “Eternity is a long time to spend alone.”

Ginfizzle licked his lips as his eyes widened. He didn’t even pretend to not be looking at her rack. He climbed to a lower branch.
It was working
.

“Everyone I’ve ever known and loved,” Katherine continued. “My brother, my friends, my family.” She bent over to pick a wildflower, giving Ginfizzle a healthy view of her dress stretched tight over her ass. She let him stare a couple of seconds before standing up again. Her back was turned to him, a demonstration of trust and vulnerability on her part. She heard him hop down to another lower branch. “All of them will pass, like so many petals of a –”

“Katherine!” shouted Cooper, charging onto the scene, brandishing his newly acquired giant steel revolver. “He’s behind you!”

“Cooper, no!” cried Katherine. She turned to Ginfizzle.

Ginfizzle looked back at her, his eyes betraying a mixture of confusion, fear, and hatred. “Wha—”

As the tranquility of the forest exploded in a single, echoing gunshot blast, so too did Ginfizzle explode into a cloud of billions of tiny red particles, suspended in the humid night air… and all over Katherine’s face.

“Eat my ass, cocksucker!” said Cooper, lowering the weapon.

“You stupid asshole!” Katherine shouted at him. “I had this under control!”

“What?” said Cooper.

Katherine stomped past him, toward the dead deer. “You were supposed to put him in the bag.”

“What difference does it make?” said Cooper.

Katherine picked up the deer by the head and bashed it repeatedly into the trunk of a nearby tree.

“Look,” said Cooper. “I can see you’re upset, but… um… What the fuck are you doing?“

“Damage control,” said Katherine. Satisfied that the deer head was a pulpy mess of brain and crushed bone, she dropped the dead animal on the ground, and gave Cooper a narrow-eyed stare when he bent down to pick it up.

“Meat,” he said, shoving it into the Bag of Holding. He wasn’t a complicated man.

The blood-mist coalesced into larger droplets as they ran down Katherine’s face. It gave her a creepy sensation. Two globs of blood ran down either side of her collarbone, combining into one larger glob at the bottom of her throat. The liquid mass continued down until it came to rest between her breasts. If gravity had been guiding it this far, there was no reason it should have stopped, and yet it did.

“I don’t think he’s dead, Cooper.”

“Huh?” said Cooper, his gaze snapping up from her blood-filled cleavage.

Katherine pinched the blood blob, and found that she was able to pull it off of her skin as one large mass. It had a consistency slightly thicker than the fake slime Tim and Cooper used to chase her around with as kids.

“Ginfizzle,” she said. “He’s alive.” She scanned the upper branches of the surrounding trees. Not spotting any vampires, she raised her voice. “And he’s a fucking creep!” She flung the blob against a nearby pine tree.

The coalescence of blood, instead of running down the trunk, flowed in the opposite direction, running up the tree like gravity in reverse. Katherine watched it climb higher and higher until she spotted Ginfizzle, way up in the top branches of this particularly tall tree.

Ginfizzle stared down at Katherine. “Thank you for your offer to spend eternity with me,” he said. “But I think I’ll hold out for somebody a bit younger.”

That evil little shit.

“Your mother!” Katherine shouted. She jumped onto the tree trunk and started climbing. She was surprised to find that she could scale a tree nearly as fast as she could run on the ground.

Ginfizzle leapt from his branch, turned into a bat, and flapped away. Katherine got a foothold on a solid branch, sprang into the air, morphed into her bat from, and flapped off after him.

“Ah fuck,” said Cooper, jogging after them.