Texas Hold 'Em (7 page)

Taking less than a second to get my bearings, I bent low and hurried toward the side of the house that was burning. I figured, dead or alive, that was where Fred would be. That was my final mistake. You would think I’d have learned something after what happened the last time I barreled into a house with reported vampire activity.

Despite the heat of a raging fire on a hot summer night, I felt a chill coming from behind me and realized too late the sum of my errors. I had rushed in assuming that both of the vehicles in the front yard belonged to Fred, and that the vampires were long gone. Now I was trapped between a fire and a cold-blooded killer. To make matters worse, a fight meant I was going to start breathing hard, and a lot of that smoke and carbon dioxide was going to make its way into my lungs. I wouldn’t last long.

I spun back toward the stairs, hoping I could make it there in time. I managed two steps before I was forced to bring my gun up and catch the oncoming vamp with a burst of lead. Startled by the roar of gunfire, the creature veered left, managing to avoid some of the rounds. Thankfully, its trajectory shift also caused its outstretched claws to narrowly miss my face.

I leaped to the side, plastering myself against the wall as it passed. Momentum was keeping it going, despite a hand it lashed out to rake against the wall in an attempt to slow itself down.

Based on previous experience, I assumed it wouldn’t be alone, and between my less-than-stealthy entrance and the thunder of the sub-machine gun, anything else hiding in the house knew where I was.

At least now I had a free path to the staircase. I backpedaled toward it, putting distance between myself and the vampire. I tried to keep the Thompson’s muzzle tracking the vampire, but it was a study in speed.

The frenzied vamp finally came to a stop and extracted its arm from the two-foot-long channel it had torn through the drywall. A strip of flowered wallpaper hung from its taloned hand. Before it could turn, I squeezed the trigger, keeping it depressed for a couple of seconds. A few dozen holes erupted from the thing as it spun, trying to reorient itself on me.

While it readied its next charge, I caught a decent gander at it. His countenance was feral, with eyes so bloodshot they looked like giant red orbs. He was newly made, not one of the ones that ambushed me last time I was in Texas. He was tall despite being hunched over—well over six feet, clean cut, mid-twenties; though, with vampires, age was meaningless. He was a pretty-boy, his bullet-riddled designer clothing more suited for clubbing than murder and arson. Of course, that tracked with some other vampires I knew. They tended to overdress.

When he lunged, I let loose another burst, sweeping the fire down toward his legs. Half of the Thompson’s drum was expended before the bullets won out. The slugs had shattered the vampire’s knees and shins, pitching it forward. The focused onslaught became a crashing roll. With a flash of Donkey Kong nostalgia, I leaped, then reached into my jacket pocket to pull out a sharpened stake. I coughed once, stumbling sideways. I had just moved in to finish him when my peripheral vision caught motion.

I stopped, making sure to keep my distance from the twitching mess on the floor, which I realized was once again between me and the stairs. I brought the gun toward the newcomer.

Smoke followed the young blonde out of a doorway down the hall, and I surmised that she must have been in the room I had seen burning from outside—the one that I had assumed Fred was in.

Her lithe figure was clad in a pair of jean shorts and a once-white cropped t-shirt that was now discolored by grime and gore. She was covered in so much blood it was impossible to tell which was hers. Blood splattered her bare limbs, covered her mouth, and ran down her chin to soak the front of her shirt. She was bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds, including a tight group of three in her chest. In her hand was a fire axe, its head thick with viscera.

“Chance!” She smiled, causing me to take an involuntary step back. I half jumped, half tripped over the vampire on the floor. Fortunately, it was too busy writhing in agony to grab me.

My dead girlfriend’s sister advanced as I withdrew. I felt my left heel encounter air as it hovered above the top of the stairs.

“Katy?” I coughed as soon as I said it. The smoke was beginning to take its toll.

“You finally came back for me! You know, I had almost given up on you. When I woke up at the ranch and realized that everyone was dead but you, I knew you’d come for me. I thought to myself: Chance will rescue me. He’ll do the right thing. He’d never leave me to die, not after what he let happen to Kristi.

“All during that first day, while they laughed and drank from me, I told myself you’d come. Even that evening, after they murdered the family and brought me somewhere else, I was sure you’d rescue me. My knight in shining armor.” Her smile reminded me of the old Katy, the popular high school kid who might have had a little crush on her older sister’s boyfriend. Then her smile changed into something dark.

“I have to be honest, though. By the second day I was starting to have my doubts. My faith was crumbling, you know? By the third day, when Christian finished turning me, I think that’s when I finally gave up hope.

“Then the fourth day rolled around, or maybe it was even the fifth... for a while it was a blur. But at some point, I became what you see here, and the whole world looked different. Oh, Chance, you can’t imagine how wonderful it was! It even made me forget about you for a while. But now here you are! I have to tell you, though: I think you’re too late. You know, to save me. What do you think?”

I was pondering how to respond to the axe-wielding lunatic when I coughed again. The spasm bent me forward, and I noticed that the vamp with the shattered legs had recovered enough to begin slowly clawing his way toward me.

Katy noticed him too, taking his head off with a sudden vicious strike of her axe. Her preternatural strength sent the bit cleanly though the thing’s neck and several inches into the hardwood floor. She pulled it out with a flick of her wrist.

“He was an asshole. Still, Christian says we’re not supposed to kill our kind.
Our kind
. I never thought I’d say that when talking about vampires. Funny, huh? And then there are all these
rules
! Who would have thought, right? Hope you don’t mind if I blame it on you?” She kicked the head and watched it roll, teeter on the brink of the stairs, then slowly tumble over the edge.

“Go ahead.” It was getting increasingly hard to breathe; I stifled a cough while trying not to listen to the soft wet thuds as the head made its leisurely way down the staircase.

“No loss. He was new. Christian finished making him last night. It wasn’t taking well; he was out of control. Did you know that there’s a right way and a wrong way to make vampires? Who would have thought, right? And some never quite make it, while others are, well…” She gave me a grin and shrugged. “…naturals.”

“Katy, where is Fred?”

“The old man? He went to pieces in the other room.” Her toothy smile at her own sick joke made my stomach turn.

For once I was at a loss for words. Katy had become a little unhinged after her sister’s death six months ago, and now the hinges were completely gone. My mind was trying to reconcile the thing before me with the girl I’d known a few short weeks ago. She had been the one that started us hunting vampires in the first place, pulling Robert out of retirement and getting me in on it. Now she’d chopped up a guy and set fire to his house. I didn’t know where to begin trying to come to grips with it all.

“Don’t look so glum, Chance. The two of us are back together! That’s all that matters, right?”

Before I could formulate a reply, another vampire came out of a room at the far end of the hall. This one looked like she could have been a thirty-something-year-old schoolmarm when she was turned. I’m talking the schoolboy-fantasy teacher, complete with scarf, cashmere sweater, and pencil skirt wrapped tightly around an hourglass figure. She seemed unconcerned with the smoke that billowed around her as she flipped through an address book. Her aura was strong. Nowhere near Christian’s, but troubling nonetheless.

“What’s going on out here? You guys were supposed to make this look like an accident, not a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And what’s with the gunfire? Can’t you handle a couple of senior citizens? Now stop screwing around and start searching, we’re supposed to be looking for—” She stopped when she finally glanced up and saw me. She must have assumed the source of the gunfire was dead, and that Katy had been talking to Old Headless.

“The old man resisted. I didn’t have a choice,” said Katy, pointing to the holes in her chest. Her tone was snarky. She was obviously annoyed at the schoolmarm for interrupting us. “But I think Christian will get over it once I bring him Chance here, don’t you think? This is the last of Robert’s new hunters. That just leaves what-his-name—Josh? Jacob? And then we’re done, and I can finally start
enjoying
myself!”

“What happened to Clarence?” The schoolmarm was seething as she looked down at the headless vamp.

“Chance killed him,” Katy said with an innocent smile she had practiced on her parents for years.

She wasn’t buying it. “With your axe? Or would you have me believe he cut his head off with a gun?”

“The dude’s name was Clarence?” I couldn’t help myself; it slipped out.

Katy shrugged, answering both questions with a single gesture.

“And yours, apparently, is Chance—don’t judge, dear,” said the schoolmarm, looking back and forth between Katy and me, her shock at seeing me rapidly overshadowed by her fury at what she saw as a bungling of Fred’s murder. Reaching an internal decision, she closed the book she was holding and tossed it to Katy, who snapped it out of the air and slid it into her back pocket.

The schoolmarm at least had the decency to flash me a forced smile before trying to kill me.

She was a blur, moving so suddenly that even Katy was taken off guard. I stood frozen. The appearance and transformation of Katy, the oncoming vampire, and the inhaling of carbon dioxide was too much.

By the time I recovered enough to fire my gun, the schoolmarm was on me, sending us both tumbling back down the stairs in a tangle of groaning (me) and snarling (her) limbs, teeth, and gunshots.

I still held the stake I was going to use on Headless in my off hand, leaving me with a one-handed grip on the out-of-control submachine gun that sent shots everywhere but into the vampire.

Fortunately, countless hours of judo training paid off, and I was able to roll down the stairs more or less in one piece. She did the same, mostly because vampires were immune to bumps and bruises. On a positive note, apparently it’s hard to maintain propriety when tumbling down a staircase in a tight wool skirt, so I at least won on form—especially when I managed to land a kick to her midsection right after we hit the foyer floor. She might have been supernaturally strong, but she weighed less than 120 pounds and couldn’t deny physics. The kick caused her to tumble straight out the front door.

Dizzy from both the fall and the lack of oxygen, I got up and stumbled toward the door, preparing to close it on her. Not that it would do much good. Katy must have brainwashed Fred or one of his family into inviting the rest in. Vampires couldn’t enter someone’s house unless they were invited in. It was some strange law that governed them. Unfortunately, they tended to cheat to get around it.

The Thompson was empty, so when a newcomer entered the foyer from the living room, I slammed the door, dropped the submachine gun and drew my Kimber automatic out of its shoulder holster, snapping off two shots at the latest vampire.

Both rounds managed to catch him in the head, leaving a pair of .45- caliber craters in his skull. We both blinked: him from the lead in his head, and me stunned by my lucky shots.

I was about to use the stake on the incapacitated vampire when a crash came from behind me. The door blew open and a weight hit me from behind, heaving me forward in a desperate bid to remain upright. Pain coursed through me as teeth sank into the back of my neck. The schoolmarm held on, her arms around me, razor-sharp nails digging channels into my chest.

I leaned forward, reached behind my shoulder to grab a fistful of cashmere sweater, and executed a throw. She sailed over me, met by the remaining contents of the Kimber’s magazine which I emptied into her as she landed.

The guy with the holes in his head regained his bearings and launched himself at me. Out of ammo, I punched out with my gun hand. The nose of the .45 slammed into his face, its white-hot muzzle plunging into an eye.

Screaming like a little girl, he batted my arm away, causing me to release the firearm. The gun fell out of his oozing eye socket to clatter on the floor.

The good news was that the smoke was nowhere near as bad on the first floor of the house, and I was able to suck in lungfuls of good air as I shook some sense back into my arm. The bad news was that I was running out of weapons and options.

Between the two bullet holes and the smoking crater of his eye socket, the vamp was pissed off. He came at me again as I dropped into a fighting stance, wondering where Katy had gone in all this. I got my answer when an axe haft appeared before me. I turned to see her standing at the base of the stairs, one hand resting in her front pocket, the other holding out her fire axe to me grip first.

“Batter up!”

I grabbed it and, taking her advice, swung home-run style at the oncoming vampire. The blow caught him full in the middle. He buckled as the axe head plunged into him. I wrenched it out and prepared to bring it down on the back of his neck. But the schoolmarm was an old one, and with vampires, old meant tough. Despite the five or so rounds I’d put in her, she was already in flight, robbing me of the killing blow.

I was forced to bring the axe up horizontally to intercept her. Falling backward as she hit me, I positioned myself for another throw, attempting to use her momentum to hurl her. It worked—for the most part. I went down, using my legs to lift her up and behind me. She should have been flung several feet, leaving her slightly disoriented and me with time to ready the axe.