The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (34 page)

Everyone but d’Arc and Annie B nodded. Even
me. I also handled the Shaky Stick carefully, passing it from my
right hand to my left and stuck it in my coat. While touching it, I
could feel the vast power of it, anima downright bubbling, but I
wouldn’t begin to know what that power really ranked until I threw
my anima pool at it . . . I think . . . I mean . . . I don’t
actually know how it works.

But they think I do.

Assumptions just be screwing up people all
over the place . . .

Reaching back into my pocket, I pretended
I’d thought twice about its location and pulled out what looked
exactly like the Shaky Stick back into my hands. I smiled. Hello,
second surprise artifact.

Once a thief, always a thief . . . and this
time my distraction proved to be a lot bigger than a falling
shelf.

[CLICK]

Annie B didn’t wait for any word more. No
stretching here. No jumping jacks. No taunts. No faking about what
they were and what they could do. Two trained killers who had been
killing for hundreds of years were going to try their arts on each
other. Two vampires who had hated each other for hundreds of years
were finally going to kill each other. It was that simple.

And I got to watch.

Where’s the beer and beef jerky? Cuz, baby,
it’s fight night and I didn’t even have to pay for
Pay-Per-View.

D’Arc had a sword over three feet long, a
big thick heavy thing that had a good chance at cutting a limb or
head straight off in one whack, especially with vampirized muscles
behind it. Annie B had a knife in each hand, better to say a dagger
really, a full foot of steel for each. I expected Annie B to be
quick and feign and stab at the edges, for d’Arc to load up and
swing hard.

Assumption gets me too sometimes.

Annie B launched herself at d’Arc like she
couldn’t see the three feet of steel that pivoted on d’Arc’s wrists
to point right towards her chest. I almost let loose my pool to
flash a blast of anima and break the sword in half.

Which would have sent all the vampires at
me. Which would have meant me trying to activate the Shaky Stick
with no pool at all. Which would have been very bad. I would have
done it to save Annie B, stupid male that I am, only it all
happened too fast.

One second she rushed d’Arc like a crazy
person and the next second she had shifted just enough so the sword
stabbed her through her shoulder and not her heart. Annie B gritted
a smile as she used her knives . . . daggers . . . whatever . . .
sharp pointy steel stabby things. Before d’Arc could resist, Annie
B’s arms pumped, in and out, in and out, in and out and in again,
each arm like a piston and each time it went forward the knife
plunged into d’Arc’s stomach.

Blood spluttered from the wound, then goo
that wasn’t blood came with it. The goo changed in a heartbeat,
soft and dripping down skin but then twisting up into a sharp
point.

D’Arc threw herself at Annie B, a point of
blood leading the way. Was this how vampires fought? Older ones at
least? They tried to get their real body into the other vampire’s
shell? Formed their blood into the weapons? Every little cut a
potential death sentence?

Annie B didn’t allow it. She shifted with
the motion’s force and went all Judo on d’Arc’s ass, dropping down,
rolling her shoulder, throwing the countess ten feet away and to
her back.

Each woman got up to their feet, weapons
still in their hands. Annie B’s shoulder had been cut, but had
little blood showing, dark sweater, dark jacket covering it.

D’Arc on the other hand was already a mess.
Her white dress was stained red with blood all around her stomach,
dripping and dropping all the way down the front of her skirt. If
she’d been human, she’d have been dead. You could see her stomach
where the knives had sliced away the cloth. I watched as goo slid
back into the wounds and the wounds sealed themselves, leaving only
muscle and white skin.

Nice stomach even if she’s a religious
freak.

“Next time, you will not get away,” d’Arc
hissed. “Then you will be mine . . .”

“King Henry?” Annie B asked.

“Yup?”

“How do I chill out?”

“Just . . . um . . . put it on.”

“Later then . . .” Annie B’s face went hard.
“I’m not done bleeding her yet.”

D’arc charged.

The longsword chopped sideways, from d’Arc’s
shoulder and away, like a baseball player flaring the bat in
practice swings. It missed, too slow, but would have cut Annie B’s
head off . . .
again
. . .

Annie B ducked, sliced twice, moved. The
longsword came back across, two’o’clock to eight’o’clock. Slide,
slice an armpit and stab with a tip into the side. D’Arc’s hand
caught the end of her blade and then her shoulders pushed.

That’s not good
, I thought.

Her hilt, that nice thick piece of metal
smashed right into Annie B’s beautiful face and cracked the
cartilage in her nose, throwing her backwards.

“Fucking low blow, bitch!” Annie B growled.
She had knives up in front of her, blood dripping down her
chin.

D’Arc smiled, cold for all her heat. “This
is my cross and every piece is a weapon with God at my
shoulder.”

“Guess I’ll cut the shoulder off.”

“Do try . . .”

That’s when Annie B dropped a knife and
fired the fifteen rounds she still had loaded in her semi-automatic
pistol right into d’Arc’s chest before anyone could say anything
against it. Guess it’s true what they say about ‘
as fast as you
can pull the trigger
’ because that vampire finger pulled faster
than a human one, a blur of white. Not a person in the room wasn’t
shocked.

I was shocked.

The vampires were shocked.

D’Arc was damned shocked.

Bullets lanced her from her stomach to her
neck, Annie B firing as her handgun rose up in front of her.
Quicker than you could see. A sound of explosion after explosion,
pop
on top of
pop
, then blossoms of blood on the
other end. The action happened in next to no time. It was the
aftermath which lingered.

The red flare on d’Arc’s white dress, right
up her body, each of the fifteen flares slowly widening. Then . . .
spurts. Goo . . . vampire, sliding out of its shell, sliding down
milky white skin.

D’Arc grunted.

Annie B glared as the countess tumbled
forward, only her sword keeping her from falling to the floor. She
leaned on it, staring at Annie B, unsure what had happened. First
time d’Arc had been shot. I could tell. Eventually I’d come to hate
that look of disbelief.

Annie B put her gun back, bent over to pick
up her knife from the ground. “My cross has more stopping power,”
she told d’Arc.

Lefty’s friend, we’ll call him Righty, moved
to protect d’Arc. Some of the other vampire’s started walking
towards Annie B too.

Oh, crap
, I thought, just before I
took my pool of anima—better to call it a lake of anima, huge,
about an hour of pooling, just as big as the one in the car
truck—and slammed the whole thing into the Shaky Stick to get it to
activate. I could have gone bigger . . . I’d hoped to go bigger . .
. but I didn’t have time.

Now or never.

The anima torrent inundated inside of me,
like rocks cracking in my body, an avalanche of anima, turning and
whirling until it burst forth. I held to what I could, the vast
majority of it, but not all of it, just like before. Even knowing
what was coming, there was too much, too strong. It snapped and got
loose and I threw it towards the Shaky Stick in my coat pocket.

Nothing.

Not.

One.

Thing.

Oh holy fuck
.

It was the excess anima, the anima that had
gotten loose from me, the anima that had escaped around me that
saved my ass.

A pair of supports in the ceiling popped so
loudly they could be heard. Pieces of metal: buttons, zippers,
cell-phones, glasses, small insignificant pieces shattered to dust.
In front of Annie B, her knives melted like mercury, rolling over
her hands to dribble on the floor. D’Arc’s longsword snapped in
half, throwing her weight forward onto her knees. Blood splattered
the dance floor in front of her.

Eyes swiveled towards me.

Oh holy fuck
.

“Everyone remembers our deal, right? This is
the warning,” I said, my balls getting bigger by the word, “the
next time we all fall down.”

“She fucking shot Countess d’Arc!” Righty
yelled at me.

“King Henry, you stupid shit!” Annie B
yelled at the same time, holding up the useless hilts of her
knives.

“Ah,” I said. I put these two things
together. “But now I’ve eliminated all the weapons, that’s fair,
right?”

“After she shot the countess twenty-fucking
times!” Righty yelled at me again, waving at d’Arc, who was working
her way back up her chest and into her body.

“It was
only
fifteen.”

“That’s it, duel over!” Righty growled at
everyone. “We’re taking off.”

“No!” D’arc gasped, eyes going crazy like
you’d imagine from some girl that believes she communes directly
with God. Here was the woman, a vampire, six-hundred years old, and
she still believed. “It looks worse than it is, Pierre,” she told
him, standing up. “They went right through. It is hardly a
scratch,” she added, blood dripping from her mouth.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” I mumbled in the
appropriate accent.

Annie B turned to me. “I’m still mad at you
about the knives . . . but that’s funny.”

“Kick her in the balls so we can get out of
here already,” I told her.

Annie B glanced at the artifact in my hands,
then up at my eyes. She knew I’d fucked up. It was all bluff from
here on out.

“Behind you!” I yelled at her, but too
late.

D’Arc didn’t even care that she bled and
oozed all over the place. The holes on the front of her body
twisted up, blood hardening until there were fifteen spikes of
blood in their place. No matter how many times I saw it, it still
freaked me out.

She jumped forward, honor out the window
once the pistol got brought into play, and chopped with the two
feet of sword she still had left.

Annie B is quick. Smart too.

Somehow she must have tracked my eyes and
figured out where d’Arc came from. Or heard it. I’m not sure, but
when she sidestepped to get out of the way of the chop coming for
the back of her head, she stepped the best way, not the wrong way.
Instead of her head getting split or her shoulder getting gashed
halfway into her chest, her arm took the blow. Just above the
elbow, her forearm was lopped completely off. It cartwheeled from
the impact, sliding onto the dance floor.

Annie B barely acted like she felt it. She
turned into d’Arc, her other arm flying in a backfist that smashed
across the countess’ jaw. It threw her back just enough for Annie B
to bring up a knee into d’Arc’s stomach.

Fifteen spikes disappeared as d’Arc grunted.
One single spike reappeared with a vengeance, spearing itself right
through Annie B’s ankle.

The baroness cried out, caught. A cheer went
up from the vampires and I knew this was bad. D’Arc’s arms grabbed
at Annie B’s shoulders, her sword forgotten as she dragged them
both to the ground. Shells were suddenly unimportant. Here is the
true fight of vampires. Real vampires. Of blood on blood. It took
place inside Annie B’s body.

Really bad
.

Annie B’s next scream was so primal it
dragged my body off the table and dragged my thoughts back to the
Shaky Stick.

I couldn’t put anima into it but what if
I can take anima out of it?
I thought to myself.

An Artificer can trap anima into a vial, we
can take it from the vial into an artifact, we can make the
artifact act as its own recharge or as a storage chamber, we can
make the artifact do certain things once we figure flow and
formulas and certain requirements. Most artifacts are keyed to be
set off by either a small burst of anima or by a simple mechanical
trigger. My original static ring is by a small burst, as an
example, and my Cold Cuffs by the trigger of being shut.

But the Shaky Stick . . .

The Shaky Stick basically threw anima at
everything that came near it. Hence all the discharge over the
years. It wanted to give anima away.

Humans can only use the anima they pool
inside of themselves . . . you can’t take from nature, it’s
impossible. But what if some artificer a thousand years ago had
figured out another way? What if he made an artifact that could
take from nature and then refine it for a mancer’s use . . .

I think I’m holding the most valuable
item in the world in my hand,
I thought.
Or . . . in my coat
pocket with the thing pretending to be the most valuable item in
the world in my hand . . .

“Don’t even think about interfering,” Righty
told me, pointing from across the other side of Annie B and Joan
d’Arc struggling on the ground, bloody goo flowing from d’Arc’s
stomach and into Annie B’s ankle. “I’ll kill you even if you bring
the whole building down on top of us.”

I believed him.

On the ground, Annie B screamed again.

D’Arc laughed over it all. “You like that,
you whore? Your own medicine! Exactly how you killed him, you
disgusting cannibal!”

Another scream as Annie B tried to push her
off, but d’Arc went nowhere.

“This is how you killed him, is it not? This
is how you
ate
him? This is how you destroyed the man I
loved
? The man I was going to marry once his service as a
human ended? He was a true saint, a man of God, and you
murdered
him! Scream, you bitch!”

Screams turned to laughs in Annie B’s
throat.

D’Arc looked
pissed
. “What is so
humorous?”