Paranormal Bromance (9 page)

How old had he been? He looked about mid-twenties, but so did I. I had no way to tell. They’d felt… older. More powerful. Our only advantage here was surprise.

Jack yanked his spear out, stepped back, and stared wide-eyed at his victim.

“Why don’t vampires wear armor? Like, stab-proof vests or something? That technology’s been around for a pretty long time,” Jack said, knocking a couple of times on his lunch box.

Ginny and Aaron both let out shouts. The bedroom door had crashed open, another goon-looking guy was coming through. They both let fly with Nerf darts. Aaron had found a couple of big-ass repeater-loading bandolier-equipped Nerf guns in his stash. They didn’t have to reload. Droplets of water flew off the darts as they gently lofted and bounced against the vampire.

“What the hell—” The bad guy gave a short laugh, brushing away the darts like he’d swat at gnats. Some of them had hit his bare face and exposed hands. Then, his expression warped into a grimace. “Shit! What
is
that?”

Ginny and Aaron kept firing, damp projectiles bouncing harmlessly off the vampire’s face and clothes, but leaving angry red welts behind. He stumbled back into the bedroom, unslinging a spear from his shoulder.

“Ginny!” I shouted and tossed one of the loaded hand crossbows left by the dead vampires to her. She studied it for a second, gave a determined nod, aimed, fired.

A shout came from inside the room. I couldn’t see what happened, but given that Ginny quickly went to reload, the shot hadn’t stopped him.

“Sam!” Jack called.

Two more heavies came in through the front door, unceremoniously crawling over their fallen comrades. This time when Jack went to stab one, the guy in front grabbed the spear and yanked it out of his grip, just like that.

I threw Jack mine and went for another, one of the broken broom handles I’d set in a pile by the sofa. The heavy wasn’t expecting an immediate comeback, and Jack got him, leaning in to really wrench the spear home. The second guy came for me.

The doorway was defensible. It was pretty straightforward to stand there and knock the guys over as they came through. But once he got inside, I didn’t have anywhere to go, no place to hide. I held my spear out, aimed straight for his chest—pointy end in the other guy, that was how it went, right? I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, I wasn’t trained for this.

The guy pointed at me. “What… is that a lunch box taped to your chest?”

“Yes.”

“You look ridiculous.”

“But hey—I’m not the one getting staked through the heart.” I prepared to charge.

He just stopped me. Unlike the others, he was ready, he was expecting it, so he gracefully stepped clean out of my way, grabbed my arm, spun me and slammed me into a wall.

Something surged in me, some kind of power or survival instinct. When he went to hit me, I ducked, and the world blurred, or slowed down, or something. I was moving faster than I ever had, I felt stronger than I ever had. It wasn’t enough, because the next time I ducked, he was moving even faster than I was. He grabbed my hair, pinned me to the wall. I couldn’t shout for help because I couldn’t breathe in. Besides, I heard fighting—the others were busy.

He tipped my head back, caught my gaze. I tried not to look, but I couldn’t help it.

He was older than me. Stronger than me. He could put enough force into his stare, enough strength into his grip, I’d just stand there while he took my head off. This was the real thing, the real power of vampires.

Screw that. Maybe he was stronger, but I didn’t have to sit here and take it, and I was a smart monkey. I didn’t need brute force.

I dropped, shoved, and it was just enough to throw him off balance and let me escape. He was right behind me, his hands grasping at the untucked tails of my shirt. But I had a target, and I didn’t look back and didn’t slow down. I crossed the room in a flash, reached the kitchen, and the bowl of holy water Ginny and Aaron had been using to soak Nerf darts. Grabbed it, flashed on the awareness that this was probably going to hurt like hell, but I didn’t exactly have time to stop for gloves.

I emptied the bowl right into the guy’s face. He screamed, bent fingers scrabbling at his face, trying to wipe the stuff off.

Some of the holy water splashed onto my hands, and the burning was like putting my hand on a stove, and no matter how fast you pulled your hand away, the burn would still be there. It didn’t seem fair. I wasn’t even religious, not before I was turned and certainly not now. But it burned. I wiped my hands on my shirt.

The vampire’s face turned red, a rash covering him, down his neck and under his shirt where water had soaked through. He let off a string of curses, keeping his eyes shut against the burn. It was like I’d heard: it didn’t kill. But boy, it hurt. I curled my hands and crossed my arms to keep from scratching at them.

The guy didn’t notice Jack coming up from behind and using a broken broomstick to stab him through the back, and through the heart. The splintered end didn’t come out through the front, which would have been cool. But it got the guy, and he dried out, his body decaying before our eyes, until he was nothing more than a dusty husk, a corpse on the edge of disintegration.

“Aaron, sign it!” That was Ginny, and there was Aaron at the kitchen counter, signing the paper towel.

He brought towel and marker to Jack, who pressed it against the wall. The ink bled through and left a mark. I didn’t much care.

Then Ginny signed it. And everything went still.

No more breaking glass, no more intruders climbing through the mess. Just the four of us standing in the living room, weapons ready, waiting. Ginny was the only one gasping for breath, and her heart was racing. I could hear it.

“Is that it?” Aaron asked.

Six vampires had gotten in. I tried to be impressed that we had rated, like, a whole platoon. But I was suddenly very tired.

We waited another minute. Still quiet. If there were any more outside they couldn’t get in. The sublet had worked. “Maybe it’s over?” I said.

Jack wasn’t letting his spear go. “Okay, but where’s Clarissa?”

“It’s all right. We have her.”

That was Rick’s calm, upper-crust voice. My muscles almost gave out. All of us almost gave out. Jack and I tried to clear out some of the mess and the desiccated dead vampires. But my hands hurt.

“Oh my God, Sam, what did you do?” Ginny said, reaching for me, then hesitating.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Does it hurt much?”

“Yes, yes it does.”

Jack wrenched open the door. Standing on the concrete stoop was Braun, the bouncer from Psalm 23, playing soldier now. Rick appeared next to him, with Clarissa Carter, whom he held immobilized, an arm across her neck, her hands held fast behind her. There were other vampires behind them, at street level, shadows in the darkness. I didn’t know if they were Rick’s or Clarissa’s.

“You see?” Rick said, showing her the destruction, the bodies of her minions. “You’re not wanted here, and this city is very much protected.” He turned her, put a hand on her face to tip her head back, forcing her to stare into his eyes. He focused his vampiric gaze on her.

“Go back to Mercedes Cook. Tell her not to try for Denver again. Ever.” In reply she nodded, slowly.

I had always thought of Rick as a nice guy. A benevolent Master. Right now, he was kind of scary. No, he was really scary.

She slumped his grip. He passed her over to Braun, who slung her over his shoulder.

“Put her in her car and leave her,” Rick ordered. “Do not harm her. But make it very clear we could have.”

“Understood,” Braun said, and went out with the unconscious Carter.

Rick stayed behind and tried to look us all over through the open front door. His expression was serene—when wasn’t it? He might have been out for an evening walk.

“Well done, gentlemen,” he said finally. “And lady. You are?”

“Um. I’m Ginny,” she said. “Just a friend.”

“Right.” Rick glanced at me, eyebrow raised, putting two and two together. I felt like a kid who’d gotten caught staying out too late. He just kept standing there. “There suddenly seems to be a prohibition on the place.”

We all looked at Ginny, who said, sheepishly, “Yeah, um. I signed a sub-lease.”

“Very creative,” Rick said, lifting a brow. “So, may I come in?”

“It’s okay, he’s a good guy,” Jack said.

But Ginny shook her head. “If it’s all the same to you, we can talk through the doorway, yeah?”

“Fair enough,” Rick said. I thought he would argue, but he really was that nice of a guy. He gestured at our so-called armor. “Nice work, there.”

“They
were
collectible,” Aaron said grumpily.

“I’ll help you clean them up. It’ll be okay.” I started picking at the duct tape and peeling off the lunch box, but had to stop. My hands hurt. I was a vampire, I was supposed to be invincible, why did my hands hurt?

“This one may be past saving,” Jack said, picking at the nice round dent right over Face’s, um, face.

Ginny came to save me, peeling off the tape for me. I held my rash-covered hands up. They hurt less that way. Ginny made a move to touch one, wincing in sympathy.

“I don’t know how to do first aid on vampires,” she said. “I didn’t think vampires could get hurt.”

“Learn something new every day,” I muttered. Apparently, vampires could also get adrenaline spikes and crashes, because I suddenly just wanted to sit down. My whole body felt like jelly.

“Blood,” Rick said. “You need blood to heal that. Then give it a night, you’ll be fine.”

Yeah, that was what I thought. Blood always came into it somehow.

Ginny got this look, wide eyed and full of trepidation. I hated to see her scared. But you know what would have been even worse? Her stepping forward. Volunteering. I didn’t want to hurt her. I
couldn’t
hurt her.

“I’m not going to ask you for that,” I said.

“Okay, thanks—but I thought that was what you guys were all about.”

“Maybe, sometimes… really, I’m just happy to have a friend I can hang out with and talk about gaming. You don’t even have to move in. I mean, you should probably pay a couple of bucks to make the good on the lease—”

“We’ll talk about it,” she said.

We stood there grinning at each other, me with my hands still raised and covered in red welts, Rick regarding us with obvious amusement.

Jack had been clearing debris from the doorway when he came over and grimaced at my hands. He called out, “Hey, Aaron—Sam’s hurt, he needs blood.”

Still wearing rubber gloves, Aaron had been cleaning up Nerf darts. “Okay, I’ll call for pizza.”

Rick looked back. “Pizza? Is that how you’ve been doing it?”

“Um, yeah,” Aaron said. “They don’t usually remember and no delivery place has banned us yet. Sam usually takes the pizza to the homeless shelter a few blocks down the street. But I guess this time… Ginny, you want some pizza?”

“You know, I think I do. Pepperoni.”

Aaron disappeared into his room, where we could hear him making the call.

“I don’t know why I ever worried about you three,” Rick said.

“Thanks for, you know. The help,” I said.

“No, thank you. You have no reason to look out for me, but I’m very glad you did. I’m happy to return the favor. In the meantime, I’ll get some people over to clean up the bodies. If that’s all right with you.”

“That would be great,” I said.

“Very well, then.” He nodded, a gesture that coming from him almost looked like a bow, and turned around.

“Who was that?” Ginny asked in awe.

“Rick, Master vampire of Denver,” I said.

“Really? Wow. Not what I’d have expected.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Oh, and when the delivery guy gets here… you may not want to stick around for that.”

“I thought I was getting pizza out of this.”

“Well, yeah, if you want it, I just thought maybe—”

She patted my shoulder and finished picking duct tape off my shirt. “Don’t worry about me, Sam.”

Impossible. Just impossible.

Ginny did not move in. Not entirely. But she paid ten bucks a month and kept some of her stuff here, and came over for dinner sometimes after work and to help playtest games or to just blow off steam. It was… nice. She never said anything about the mess.

Sometimes, Ginny and I would go out to a movie or coffee shop or something—she’d get a drink, I’d watch her drink. I didn’t know where this was going between us, or what was going to happen. I assumed at some point she’d get tired of hanging out with someone who could never take her out for dinner—or rather, who’d be all too happy to take her out for dinner. At some point she’d want to get married and have kids. All the things I couldn’t do for her. She’d find someone, and I’d maybe see her once a month instead of a few times a week. Or maybe we’d carry on like this for decades. Rick said you had to be fatalistic about these things. You had to be okay with letting go, you had to enjoy what you had in the moment. She didn’t want to be a vampire, so she would get old and I wouldn’t, and we’d have to deal with that at some point. But whatever happened, I hoped we’d stay friends.