The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (9 page)

Better than nothing.

“We can stop, King Henry,” Annie B tried.
“Just come with me. Two days for your services, that’s all I
ask.”

“If you’d asked, maybe I’d have said
yes
,” I decided. My hand found a teapot behind my back and
grabbed onto it. A sadistic part of me hoped it was pink with
flowers. “But you ordered . . . and I don’t like ordering. Don’t
like people that order, either. Don’t like people who
bully
.
If you are even
people
. I saw the look, Annie B. Saw the
look like you wanted to wear me like a fur coat. Don’t think I’m
going to just walk off with you after that one. This fur coat goes
down with a fight.”

Her neck bent from side to side as she moved
her tongue to touch her lips once more. As a gesture, it was more
animal than human. “And I saw the look in your face, King Henry,”
she accused me, her expression all hunger.

I frowned. “What look?”

“The look at the counter . . .” she moaned,
throaty, dark tendrils of sound pulling me into her. “Like you
wanted to rip my pants off, turn me around, and
wear me
like
a sleeve.”

Vampire or not, she had a fair point with
that one. “Didn’t last long . . .” I apologized. “It’s been awhile
. . .”

“Neither did mine . . .” she returned. “We
all have our urges, human or . . .
other
. Perhaps if we have
a moment of peace and quiet, we can . . . share them with each
other.”

My dick dropped out of my pants and ran for
the back door. “Come near me and I’ll beat your ass again.”

“Promises . . .” she whispered, feet
advancing towards me.

I backed up pace for pace, teapot hidden
behind the bulk of my geomancer’s coat. Over my shoulder, the door
from the antique store into my shop got closer. “No more playing,
Annie B! You come at me and I’ll mess you up, you hear?”

“Bluffing little boy,” she snarled at me,
hips, arms, her whole body swaying in a way that got a man’s blood
pumping. “Doesn’t have enough of a charge to do anything about the
nasty predator stalking him, but is showing his feathers to try to
buy himself time.”

Shit
.

Annie B leapt the rest of the way to me
without any forewarning. One moment it was a slow step by step and
then she sprang like some type of Olympic athlete, ten feet through
the air, arm whooshing towards my head. If it hit, it would have
knocked me out. There’s this kind of jumping punch in MMA called
the superman-punch. This thing made all those punches look like the
superboy-punch. Would have ended my night early. No time for
dessert. Straight to bed, little boy.

Except for my teapot.

You can bet I’ve never ever wanted to have
to utter those words.

Except for my teapot
.

I chucked the teapot at her the same time
she jumped. I’d meant to take her in the head but because of her
leap it nailed her in the chest, five pounds of pain. It didn’t
break apart. Nice. Once upon a time they made products to last. The
teapot stopped Annie B cold, her punch left swinging wildly in the
air as she crashed to the ground.

My feet sped up, running me towards my back
room.

FYI . . . teapot was red with a yellow
chicken on it.

Old ladies will buy anything . . .

[CLICK]

I figured I had time to make a grab for one
artifact before she followed me through the door into my shop. I
didn’t even think about which one until I stood over them. It’s not
like there were tons. Geo-anima, cryo-anima, aero-anima,
floro-anima, and fauna-anima were the types I had steady supplies
for. Everything else I had to buy and everything else I was out
of.

It’s not practical to make artifacts if they
cost me too much. Supply/demand, all that stuff you slept through
during your
Economics
class. I used most of the bought anima
for experimentation, but so far, other than the static ring, my
experiments weren’t going anywhere unless they exploded first.

The static ring
. I had it, full
charge. I had enough anima built up in my body to do something with
the Mancy. I had my artifacts. Only one of which was going to be of
use in a fight. The first one I ever made . . . I grabbed it.

They were metal cuffs, lined with a glowing
white light to let you know there was something going on inside.
Cold cuffs, I’d called them back at the Asylum. Slap them on and
watch cryo-anima cool down the person’s body temperature until they
could barely move, too busy fighting off hypothermia. With a charge
long enough for one hour of use before they ran out, that’s more
than enough time to figure out what to do with the vampire. Or at
least call Ceinwyn and have her figure out what to do with the
vampire.

Ceinwyn . . .

Volunteered . . .

She wouldn’t . . .

Annie B burst through the door with enough
impact to crack one of the hinges. She blinked, taking in the room
to line up where I was at. There was a nasty look on her face. It
was the only warning I had before she threw my teapot back at me
with so much speed it would have killed me.

Only she missed.

Not by accident. She’d meant to miss.

Hitting my wall at Mach 3, the teapot
finally broke. The shards of ceramic clattered all over the floor,
a dust of red mist spraying over the room.
Poor chicken . .
.

She wanted me alive to use the Mancy for
her. Couldn’t be good, vampires being vampires. It was never
supposed to be good with the Vampire Embassies. Infighting and
personal feuds going back thousands of years. Bad mojo to be a part
of. Especially for the food. But whatever she wanted from me, no
matter how bad it was, it meant she couldn’t kill me.

I can win this shit
.

“It’s cute you’re fighting back, King
Henry,” Annie B told me, “but you’re making this much harder on
yourself than it needs to be. I’m not making you into a slave . . .
more like an indentured servant. Two days, your opinion, maybe a
bit of Mancy, that’s all. Am I really so scary?”

“You want to fuck me and then eat me,” I
growled at her from across the room, my worktable the only obstacle
between us. “Of course you’re scary.”

“Now, now,” she whispered as she strode
forward. “No reason we can’t do both at the same time, is
there?”

“Leave, Annie B, last time I’m telling you.”
The Cold Cuffs clicked in my left hand, the ring sat ready on my
right hand, and anima bubbled in my chest. “I ain’t your normal
mancer.”

“No . . . you’re far more fun.” Her hand
flicked at her face where the cut had been and now very much
wasn’t. “Have you ever had a woman
inside you
, King Henry?
Slipping in, running through your veins, tasting every part of you
as her body rides on top of you? It only takes two small cuts on
our hands . . . I promise it won’t even leave a scar . . .”

My dick hollered from where it had run away
to hide, “
I ain’t ever coming back, I hope you know
that!
”

For once, I was speechless.

Annie B started circling the table. I
circled it with her, the opposite way. “No answer?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Final answer?”

“You come at me again and I’ll do everything
in my power as an Ultra to destroy you, Annie B,” I told her, feet
still circling.

With another lick of her lips, she made the
mistake I’d been waiting for. She hopped up on the table to try to
get to me. She’d kind of done a sloppy free-running move to get
over it. Hands down, butt sliding forward, legs out in front to
make sure I didn’t rush her. Only I didn’t need to rush her.

The table was metal.

Yeah, motherfucker.
Metal
. My
favorite. Better than soil, better than stone, better than glass.
Wonderful meee-ee-e-e-eetal. Oopsie daisy, Annie-bo-fanny.

Anima burst from me, ten full minutes of
build up. A lot more than a little trick. More than we were ever
allowed to hold at the Asylum actually. Ten minutes. Would have
been something . . .

Anima poured into the table, manipulating
the metal. Some types of mancers can actually create with their
anima, Firestarters as the ultimate example, but not Artificers. We
have to use what’s there. But . . . boy, could we use it. I could
have made a spike of steel flash straight up into her head.
Probably should have. But I went the other route. Which was to make
the metal flex and form around her hands and thighs, becoming
fluid, molding like liquid water, then returning to a solid state
in a second. Nice and easy. One trapped vamp.

She could have been modern art.

Annie B glared down at the table with a
grunt. She pulled at it, but it didn’t give. “Kinky, King
Henry.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Just shut
up.”

“Perhaps not the best position,” she
decided. Her arms were deep into the steel, holding up her chest,
while her legs splayed out in the middle of her slide, twisting her
frame so she couldn’t lie down or sit up all the way. Had to be
hell on her back. “And you’ll have to rip my pants to get at all
the really good parts.”

“I told you to shut up,” I repeated, leaning
in closer than I ever would have if she was unbound.

She didn’t shut up. “A wonderful show of
anima manipulation, however. Which only confirms that I need your
skills to help with my not-so-little problem . . .” She pulled at
the metal one more time.

“Has to be thick enough to take any
accidental explosions,” I explained, banging the table with my
knuckle. “You’ll never break it. Even you, fanged lady.”

“I told you . . .
we don’t have
fangs
.”

“But you still bite,” I said seriously.

“Only for foreplay,” she teased, tongue
riding the line of her teeth. “Would you like to see a trick?”

“I’ll pass.”

I heard her thumb break itself a split
second before her hand was free of the metal and wrapped around my
throat. “I’ve had fun teasing you,” she panted as she choked me,
“But this game is at an end, I think . . .”

Thank
the Mancy I hadn’t set down my
Cold Cuffs. They clicked around her wrist with a nice finality. A
yank of my arm and her hand was off my throat, another yank and the
other half of the cuffs locked in place around her second wrist.
The cuffs flashed white, then the anima inside them released.

Cold flooded into Annie B. Cold like an
iced-over lake. Cold like a snow-bath. The cold to make a human
being try to cover themselves, more worried about getting warm than
trying to hurt a person. The kind of cold that makes you shiver and
shut up.

Of course, Annie B wasn’t human. She was a
creature living inside a human body. That wasn’t warm-blooded but
mega
-blooded, that lived in environments never reaching over
seventy degrees. They liked the cold.

They really like the cold
.

A moan escaped from Annie B, the first sign
she wasn’t reacting the way I’d planned. Her body twisted against
the cuffs, against the metal still holding her thighs. Hands free,
she flopped over backward on the table, back arching. Her black
sweater road up her body, revealing a stomach that even hours of
crunches would have envied. She moaned again, hips pushing. Her
eyes were wide, flashing toward my face.

“My God . . .” she whispered. “
You do
vibrate . . .
”

The white light on the cuffs faded, anima
drained. She’d burned up enough cryo-anima to put down a human for
an hour in about thirty seconds.

“Son of a bitch . . .” I growled. “Did you
just . . .
did you
?”

Her thumbs broke in a crunch, Cold Cuffs
flopping to the floor. Annie B didn’t rise from where she was lain
out, like she’d been worn out by hours and hours of good ol’
grunting and humping. “Please tell me . . . are they for sell?” she
asked.

King Henry Price. I either created the first
vampire sex toy or what was essentially vamp-nip. I don’t know
which is grosser.

Okay, I do . . . definitely vampire sex toy
. . . but I was trying not to think about it . . .

I smiled down at her. Two strikes, one to
go.

My right hand reached out, touched her face.
Annie B sighed, nuzzling it. It might not have knocked her out, but
in the process of whatever else it had done to her, the Cold Cuffs
had caused lethargy to sweep her body. She pulled her head back,
exposing her throat and offering a chance for me to sweep my hand
down it. Her choker glinted once more. If there’s a greater sign
that she didn’t fear me, I don’t know what it is.

Don’t fear me at your peril.

I kept smiling as I activated my static ring
and electrocuted the bitch.

Moans turned into screams. Her back arched
in pain, not pleasure. Her hips fought against their holds. Her
arms flopped useless as the current raced through them. Her head
clanged against the metal. Lethargy was replaced with a stunned
body.

Cold. Crossed out. Electricity. Check mark,
motherfucker. “That’s more like it!” I yelled at her.

Her velvet eyes hadn’t left mine. “You
asshole . . .”

“I know. I’m an asshole,” I said. “But who’s
sparkling now, bitch?”

If only I had remembered about keeping my
mouth shut . . .

That’s when the crimson string of blood flew
from where her cut cheek had not quite as disappeared as I thought.
Only it wasn’t as weak as it had been before. The blood was thick,
pulsing, and powerful as it lunged up my arm, snake-like in the
time it took me to blink. It wrapped itself around my throat and
squeezed, a constrictor.

My air disappeared. My strength as I tried
to pull it off got me nowhere, and only got weaker as seconds
ticked by without oxygen. My feet went out on me again. I leaned
against the table, face close to Annie B’s.

She pouted her lips, rope of blood hanging
from her cheek. “Go to sleep, King Henry. We have a long drive and
no more time for games.”