DEAD: Confrontation (45 page)

“Enough!” Morgan snapped, cutting me off. “We have a l
egitimate problem at the moment, and nothing is being accomplished by you two behaving like children with all of this petty arguing.”

“Amen, sister,” Lisa hissed under her breath. I saw Beli
nda’s eyes shift her way for just a second. Hmm, later on I would have to have a chat with her and remind the girl about the enhanced hearing of the supernatural; at least when it comes to ghouls and vampires and—if my eyes were not fooling me when I thought that I caught a flicker of a barely perceptible smirk—psychics.

“As fun as all of this has been,” I glanced at my microwave and the digital clock readout, “we should adjourn until this eve
ning.”
Adjourn
.  Good for me and my use of words.

After some rather stiff farewells, Morgan and Belinda left. I went to my closet and spent the day listening to the daily routine kick in around the complex. Spring had officially started a few days ago, but in Oregon, that only meant that the rain was a little warmer. Today was one of those postcard days with temper
atures in the 60s, and a bright sun sneaking across a perfectly blue sky like it didn’t want to be noticed. At least…that’s how I remembered them. It couldn’t actually see it for myself. Sunlight on my skin feels like a blow torch.  Still, I wouldn’t miss the sun as much as I would a pint of Chunky Monkey. However, if I was being honest with myself and not so superficial, days like this would place in the top ten of things Ava misses about being human.

***

“Morgan and Belinda haven’t come by or called or anything,” Lisa argued as I grabbed all the stuff from last night’s vampire hunt. “We should probably wait.”

“I don’t need to wait for them to repeat all the same crap from yesterday.” I shook the giant squirt gun to ensure it was still full. Did holy water expire or lose its holiness? I sure
hope not.

“Well I’m going on record as saying that this is a bad idea.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“It’s not a matter of sides,” Lisa said as she followed me out the door, pulled it shut, and checked that it was locked. “It’s a matter of last night we found out how out of our league we are when it comes to the whole ‘vampire slayer’ thing.”

Wasn’t there a show about that or something
, I wondered as we walked in silence to the car.

The cranky silence continued as we drove to the same neighborhood as last night.  Once we arrived, I swapped out with Lisa and let her take the wheel as I hung my head out the wi
ndow and went into ‘Super-sniffer’ mode. It didn’t take long to find what I was searching for, only…it wasn’t like last night.  It was…

“Crap! I snarled. “Stop the car.”

I was out before we’d actually come to a stop. Shifting into full-blown bloodhound…figuratively of course…I let my nose lead me to the source of the smell. The stench of rotten chocolate cake, garbage can scum, and the cottage cheese-thick pus that came out of a boil brought me to a pale-blue two-story house.  There was nothing that made this house stand out from the others on the block. However, every residence on the entire street was totally dark. There wasn’t a light on inside or out.

“Ave—”

“Shut up and get back in the car,” I snapped a bit more harshly than I intended, but there was some bad stuff in the air, and I didn’t want to worry about keeping one eye out for Lisa. I had a feeling I’d be busy enough watching my own ass. I heard some sort of vocal protest, but I grabbed the big bag of vampire killing stuff and slammed the door before the protests could become a discussion.

Following my keen sense of ghoulish smell, I moved down one side of the house and into the back yard.  There was a fence down each side of the large yard as well as the back, separating this house from both side-neighbors as well as the houses behind it. I reached the rear and had a choice between a five-step climb up onto the covered back porch and presumably the back door, or seven concrete steps down to a wooden door with a curtained window.  The smell was from down that way.  Also, right about then, there was a loud crash.

I was at the bottom in two steps and through the door like a pissed off Clint Eastwood. Glass and wood went everywhere, and in the absolute blackness, two sets of glowing red eyes shifted my direction. Good thing I have excellent night-vision.  That’s how I managed to make out Adrian straddling Belinda, both had their clothes torn to ribbons, and both were marked up with furrowed rows of fingernail marks that looked nasty.

Oh yeah…and then there was the whole thing about Adrian holding a nasty looking wooden stake in his hands, trying to drive it into the smooth skin between Belinda’s disgustingly pe
rfect breasts. I was willing to bet that those things kept their shape whether she was standing or leaning over.

For some reason, that made me remember my mortification after allowing one of my lovers to videotape our sexual esc
apades one night. He’d been holding the camera in his hand while I was on top.
When the hell had my amazing breasts turned into a pair of poorly synchronized pendulums?
I was further pushed into despondency when he’d taken footage from above; two fleshy magnets that were repelled by each other and…well just you never mind.  Anyways…back to the whole Adrian-trying-to-stake-Belinda thing.

I pulled my own stake from the bag, along with the squirt gun full of hopefully-not-expired holy water. I couldn’t use the latter without risking Belinda—not that I was all that against it—so I stood in the doorway brandishing the nasty, pointy, wooden bringer-of-death.

“Haven’t you heard, Adrian?” I asked trying to sound confident. “No means no.”

“This doesn’t concern you, corpse-eater,” Adrian said through barred teeth.

I have to say, his face is much more expressive than Belinda’s. Even now while she lay on the cold, dirty concrete floor, trying to hold off the stake that was moving closer by fractions of an inch as we spoke, her face was smooth and lacking anything resembling emotion.

“Seriously?” I snapped. “We’re doing the name calling thing?”

“Ayy…v-vaa,” Belinda managed through the closest thing to strained her voice seemed capable of, “stop running your mouth and…kill. Him. You. Idiot.”

“Is this a vampire thing?” I took a step into the basement.

“You can stay right where you are, lassie.” Adrian put a bit more into his attempt at driving the sharpened stake in his hands closer to Belinda.

“Actually, I seem to be free to move about as I like, Carrot-top.” I took another step into the pitch black basement. “You have your hands full as far as I can tell.”

“Kill this bastard,” Belinda said through pursed lips as she struggled to keep the point—which was now hovering about a centimeter above her skin—from turning her into a little sparkly ash pile.

“Stop being so bossy!” I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes and took another step closer.

“Why would you help somebody so crass and unpleasant…and who obviously sees you as contemptible at the very best?”

Good point
.

“And you obviously see me as an equal…a partner or som
ething?”

“I—”

“Can it, Lucky,” I cut him off. Now I was only a step or two away. “You’ve been a jerk to me since we met. And you’ve just got this thing about you when you talk that I’m just certain is con…conde…”

“Condescending?” Belinda offered. She actually sounded more annoyed with me than with the guy on top of her with the stake.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “that’s the word…I think.”

“And this one is so kind to you,” Adrian said with a laugh.

“At least I know what to expect from her,” I retorted with a shrug.

“Do you really?”

Hmmm. That’s a good point. My mind flashed to our first meeting. It’d been in an all-night grocery store; she’d wanted to bite Lisa and have me eat the remains to eliminate any evidence.

An idea hit me. I didn’t really have any logic to my revel
ation, and I didn’t see some deep issue with a sudden clarity.  What it came down to was a feeling.  Just a gut feeling.

“At least she didn’t turn a fresh kill into a rabid dog of a vampire that tried to attack me.” I inched forward. “She actually offered me a fresh meal the first time we met.”
Even if it was my friend that she wanted to serve up, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Do you really need a vampire queen who wants to feed you? By the looks…you could skip a meal or two,” Adrian said with a twinkle of laughter dancing through his Irish lilt.

“You dick!” I lunged forward and drove my stake into the back of the surprised vamp. I could see his face as clearly as if there’d been a light on in this damp, dark, basement. He was truly shocked, like there was no way this was happening. Then, he rippled with white hot fire that was here and gone in less than a second.

And poof!

A cascade of that gritty ash washed over Belinda. The stake that was about to pierce her chest flew across the room and shattered against the concrete wall.  I had a brief mental flash of Belinda and me getting over our petty squabbles.

“What is wrong with you!”

Nope, guess not
.

“How hard would it be to warn somebody?” she sputtered while spitting out bits of vampire ash.

“If I would’ve warned somebody,” I snatched back the hand I’d been about to offer to help her to her feet, “then I wouldn’t have had the element of surprise.”

I wasn’t about to admit that I had absolutely no idea or plan as to what I would do. Much less the fact that his snarky little weight comment is what
really
set me off.

Belinda sprang to her feet…literally…dusting herself off from head to toe.  Being so close to her was probably why I didn’t smell anything unusual.  That’s why I was so surprised when I turned around and discovered two of those revenant thingies standing in the doorway. Ummm…okay…standing might be stretching it a bit. One of them was crouched down on all fours—and I’m not talking hands-and-knees but rather hands-and-feet. The other was clinging to the wall of the stairwell that led down to the basement like a twisted spider.

“I swear I can’t understand why Morgan didn’t—”

I would’ve loved to have heard the rest of that statement, but Belinda saw the two agitated critters in the doorway and was suddenly struck speechless.  If I could bottle that moment.

“This is not good at all,” Belinda said in her usual calm voice.

“Leftovers?” I asked.

“If they belonged to Adrian, they would’ve disintegrated with him.”

“Huh?”

“With lessor creatures like a revenant, the death of its creator results in the death of the revenant.”

“But if, like your creator got staked or something, you wouldn’t…right?”

“Do I look like a revenant?”

“Nope,” I glanced sideways, “just a bitch.”

“I don’t imagine you brought extra stakes,” Belinda said, ignoring my teensy barb.

Didn’t she notice the plastic squirt gun with the big, vit
amin-shaped chamber on top? Well, time to show her I was not a ghoul to be messed with. I brought up the holy-water-filled Super Soaker and fired a stream from left to right.

It was like tossing a match onto some gasoline-soaked hay.

Whoomph!

The two revenants turned into comets as they screeched and took off, leaving a trail of flames in their wake. It looked way cooler than it sounds. Also, their screams of pain, or whatever that sound was they were making as they tore off into the night, caused the windows at head level around the basement to shatter.  I was impressed. I thought that sort of thing only happened in a Memorex commercial.

“
What
is that?” Now Belinda was paying attention to my squirt gun. I explained, and got a bit of pleasure out of seeing her back a few steps away from me like I was a poisonous snake.

“Is it…empty?” Wow, I almost heard emotion in her voice.

“Mostly…but what is that whole thing you said about the revenants dying with their creator?”

“Exactly that.” Belinda edged towards the door, the whole time keeping an eye on my Super Soaker.

“That would mean that some vampire other than Adrian created those two,” I said, basically mouthing my thoughts out loud.

“You catch on quickly,” Belinda retorted in her usual snotty tone.

“Is this really the time for you to be a complete bitch?” I shook the squirt gun for added emphasis.

“You’re…” she glanced at the weapon, then back to my eyes, “correct. There are more pressing matters.”

“So then, if Adrian isn’t the bad guy…what is going on?”

“He was somebody’s lieutenant.”

“Huh?”

“His king or queen sent him to test our defenses…see how much effort it might take to overthrow the leader of whichever kiss they were setting their sights on. Namely mine.”

Wow. Not the revelation that there was probably an even nastier vampire out there, but that Belinda had climbed down off of Bitch Mountain and actually spoken to me.