Bitten
Dez caught a glimpse of Michael’s shadow as he disappeared around the corner. Levi was halfway between Dez and Michael, and in a few moments veered right too. The vampire child loped along at Dez’s heels. He had only a vague sense of where they were, but when he gained the corner and swerved right, he saw natural light spilling into the dead end of a long corridor.
No way, he thought. Was it possible they’d escape?
You might, a voice in his head answered. But Iris won’t.
Dez chugged forward.
She’s gone, Dez.
He shook his head.
You lost her as surely as you lost Susan.
From behind them came voices.
“Faster,” Dez grunted.
The vampire child scampered past him.
“You left him unattended?” a voice behind him asked.
“He seemed harmless,” someone answered. The voice was familiar.
The princess, Dez realized. They’d left Mara alone with Levi, and when things went haywire in the equipment room, the princess had left her post. Had she wanted them to escape? As improbable as the thought was, Dez couldn’t shake it.
Michael reached the end of the hallway, stopped and peered through the glass door. The rest of them hustled to catch up. The vampire child drew even with Levi, who glanced down at it in surprise. The vampire loped along beside Levi, and after running apace with it for several strides, Levi smiled. Dez saw that smile and thought, Such a good kid. Too damned nice to survive. That he’d made it this long was a marvel. Levi and the child joined Michael at the door.
“There!” someone shouted. Dez threw a glance over his shoulder and discovered a male vampire with red shoulder-length hair. The vampire had been pointing in Dez’s direction, but now his arm dropped and he bolted toward Dez, a pair of vampires in his wake. One of them was Siddu, the other Jemila.
Dez returned his attention to the trio waiting for him at the door. “Go!” he called. Michael compressed his lips, nodded, and pushed through. Levi followed, the vampire child at his heels.
“He’s mine,” someone said, terribly close, and Dez didn’t even look over his shoulder. He was almost to the door, and then he burst through. Dez spotted Michael and Levi ahead. The school was plopped right inside this hilly historic neighborhood, but on the other side lay a forest, if Dez remembered correctly, and if they were lucky, maybe they could duck inside and find refuge.
You know they’ll find you, he thought. They’ll never stop hunting you.
The door behind them banged open, Siddu and the others charging through. Dez hustled forward, past the school property line and toward the pretty 1930s-era houses in the distance.
A whistling sound from his right drew his attention, and something scythed the air. Dez glanced over in time to see a vampire land, one that had presumably been standing sentry atop the school, and join in the pursuit. It was a rangy blond woman who’d made the jump, more than thirty feet from roof to ground, like it was nothing.
Shit. Dez vaulted a low fence. He caught sight of Michael and Levi as they navigated an ornately landscaped fountain and fire pit area. Ahead was a house’s front yard, the road, and more properties beyond that. There were trees and bushes everywhere, but with the vampires huffing down their backs, the cover was useless. If only they could put some distance between them. If only they could—
His thoughts broke off as he realized the vampire child was gone. At the edge of the road, Dez peered back through the leafless branches of a dogwood to find the child perched atop a bulky gray heating unit tucked within an alcove. The child wasn’t watching him, was instead plastered against the house’s redbrick façade, clearly waiting for the vampire pursuers to pass. Dez began to move toward the road, but fascination with the scene stopped him.
“Dez!” someone shouted. Dez followed the voice, saw Michael and Levi paused at the forest’s edge, in the process of ducking beneath spruce boughs and ushering him forward. Dez crossed the road at a trot and had just entered the front yard of a Tudor-style home when a figure drew even with the alcove where the vampire child was hiding. The child sprang.
It was the blond vampire the child took down, and though the child’s clawed hands whirred at the blond woman’s face, she still managed to unseat the child. But as the blond vampire stood, Dez could see the rills of blood lapping down her chest, could hear her gargling attempts at breathing, and without pause the vampire child leapt upon her again, pinned her to the browned grass, and tore at her in a paroxysm of claws and teeth.
My God, he thought.
The three pursuing vampires had fanned out around their fallen comrade, and Siddu said, “Leave her.”
The red-haired vampire joined Siddu in sprinting toward the road, but Jemila merely edged around the site of the gruesome attack, a look of horrified disgust on her face.
“There!” the one with red hair shouted, pointing at Dez’s position.
Dez cursed himself for gaping at the spectacle of the child’s attack, but the shock of having a vampire ally was too great for him not to watch. He raced around the side of the Tudor, into the backyard, where Levi and Michael were disappearing into the forest.
Dez scuttered after them, and was about to duck under the spruce boughs, when his peripheral vision revealed more shapes hurrying around the opposite side of the Tudor. He didn’t recognize the new vampires, but it didn’t matter. There were two of them, and added to Siddu, Jemila, and the man with red hair, they brought the total to five pursuers. Five vampires and only three of them, and Michael’s pyrokinetic abilities were temporarily out of order. No weapons, no time to hide, no anything except the bloodthirsty monsters closing in around them.
All converging on Dez.
In the split second before he scampered up a short rise into the forest, he glimpsed the new vampires in his periphery doing the same. Only they weren’t moving in his direction, not yet. They were charging ahead, maybe intending to cut him off, to cull him from his tiny pack.
He sprinted harder. He knew he should spare a thought for his friends, think altruistic thoughts – If all five of the vampires go for me, at least my friends will get away – but he didn’t want to die, dammit. Not ever, but especially not now, when so much was unsettled. Susan a turncoat, Iris consigned to a life of vampire servitude. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The childishness of the thought galled him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of injustice. He gained the top of the rise, beheld a gradually sloping valley before him, and spied, maybe eighty yards ahead, what looked like a gravel road.
He’d never make it there. Levi and Michael might, if they kept running. And if the vampires concentrated on Dez. Even now the two new vampires, both women, were angling toward Dez, ahead of him by maybe twenty feet. They’d cut him off and all five would feast on him.
The end, he thought. This is how it ends.
“Over here!” someone shouted.
Levi.
Dez watched in amazement as Levi tore off from Michael and sprinted away, between the gravel road and the pair of female vampires.
Taking them away from Dez.
Oh my God, Dez thought. No, kid. Don’t do this.
But Levi was doing this, was flapping his arms and yelling like a madman for the vampires to follow him, and by God, they were. And Dez could let him, could use the diversion to get away from the newcomers, but what would that accomplish? What good would that do? There were three others hot on his trail.
Dez was about to give chase toward Levi when something slammed him from behind and rode him down. They skidded on the dead leaves and compacted dirt. A surge of terror washed over him. Instinctively, Dez jerked an elbow at his attacker, but the blow was an ineffective one, and he was seized by the shoulders, rolled onto his back, and he looked up into Jemila’s eyes. There was no trace of the woman she’d looked like back in the library. This creature was a ravening, glow-eyed horror.
She snapped at Dez. He barely eluded her teeth, thrust his weight against her, but she gripped his shoulders, undulated with his motion like they were passionate lovers. Dez punched at her, but she dodged him, dodged him again. He shoved a thumbnail into her eye and dug.
Jemila screamed, swatted his arm aside, and darted in. This time Dez felt a fireblast above his right ear as her teeth furrowed the hair and flesh there. Dez struggled frantically, batted at her, but she snagged his coat with her teeth and ripped off a chunk of leather. He bucked, but she wouldn’t be thrown off. He reared back, belted her in the jaw. Quicker than he could react, she bashed his cheek with a fist, and the world went hazy. She was laughing, he realized, and that roused his temper. He pushed up, seized her by the collar, and slammed his forehead into hers.
The world swam, semi-dissolved, and he thought, Oh shit, I’m losing consciousness. Just as bad, Jemila seemed to sense it. He felt his arms being pressed to the cold ground and was powerless to resist. Jemila’s chortle crescendoed, and through his swimming vision, like peering up through a glass-bottom boat, he watched her open her jaws, the deadly teeth and deranged jack-o’-lantern eyes flashing in triumph. And then a shape materialized behind her, a staggering, familiar shape. The figure – Michael – swung a heavy log, and the thud it made seemed to clear Dez’s brain. Jemila slumped forward as Dez scrambled out from under her.
He’d scarcely gotten to his feet when another shape rocketed at him. He sidestepped the hurtling figure, but it snagged his arm, dragged him with it. Dez stumbled but kept his feet as it pounded the earth in a whirl of dead leaves.
Siddu rose and smiled at him.
Someone grunted, and Dez glanced over in time to see the red-haired vampire throw his hands up, arrest Michael’s attempt to brain him with the heavy branch, then heave Michael sideways, down a steep decline.
Dez turned to find Siddu grinning at him, all teeth and eyes. The son of a bitch. He wanted Dez to see him before he attacked. Dez took a step backward, glanced toward the slope, where the red-haired vampire was stalking after Michael.
Dez bolted for the hill and heard Siddu pounding after him. Dez jumped, had a moment’s fear that Siddu would snag the back of his jacket and snatch him out of the air like a giant mosquito, then discovered how far it was to the bottom of the decline and worried he’d break an ankle. He hit the ground toes first, tucked his head as his upper body pitched forward, and somersaulted three times before springing to his feet. Ahead and to his left Michael was almost to the road, the red-head steadily closing in. Behind Dez, Siddu was following, and if Dez reached the road, so what? It wasn’t like there were vehicles anymore, at least no more than one a day. And if there was a car, it would belong to the cannibals or to a flesh trader like Bill Keaton. Only the wicked owned cars now.
Dez shambled toward the road, feeling torpid, leaden, like he was wearing ankle weights, and where the hell was Levi? No sound was a bad sign, especially given how loud the kid had been less than a minute ago. The female vampires had been swarming toward Levi, the selfless idiot drawing them away, and for what? Now all three would die. Levi and Michael should have gone ahead, should’ve saved their own hides. Cassandra was right. This traveling in a pack didn’t work, and their foolish plan to rescue Susan and Cassidy certainly hadn’t worked. If he’d only known Susan didn’t want to be saved, they could have bypassed the school. He’d still be with Iris, he—
You never would have met Iris if you hadn’t swaggered into the Four Winds Bar like Clint Eastwood and started asking about Susan, so stop. Your damned. Whining. And focus!
He was almost to the road. He heard a low, motorized sound and told himself it was his imagination, the feeble hope of the condemned just before the guillotine drops. At the thought, Dez dove forward, some instinct demanding evasive action, and at that moment a shape swooped over him. Siddu grasped for him and missed by inches.
Fuck this, Dez thought. They were trapped here in the forest, about to die, and he wasn’t going to be chased around like a rabbit. He’d go down fighting. Siddu must’ve seen something in his expression because he smiled, nodded. The vampiric version of the man was scarcely visible now. Only his wild hair and the slight elongation of his canines gave any sign that Siddu wasn’t a Latent like Dez.
Siddu beckoned Dez forward, Come on.
Dez lunged. Siddu easily sideslipped him, but Dez figured he would, so he planted and kicked at him, but Siddu easily smacked his foot aside. The movement brought Dez’s upper body nearer, so he threw a desperate left-handed punch, which missed, and Siddu struck him with a jab, bam, right in the fucking mouth. It pissed Dez off because Siddu didn’t put much into it. Dez was bigger, longer, but Siddu was a tensile bundle of power, even without the change upon him. Dez moved in, faked a right, faked a left, and even as he aimed a powerful right-handed blow at Siddu’s face, the vampire was already smiling, was feinting and seizing Dez’s jacket with one hand and jerking him into a steel mallet of a body blow with the other. Dez oomphed, doubled over, and Siddu grabbed him, planted, swung him in a dispiritingly easy arc over his head. Dez crashed to the earth shoulder-first, tried to roll with it, but skidded gracelessly instead, his back hyperextending, his legs smashing down. Dez made to get up, but something broadsided him, knocked him onto his side. He threw up a hand instinctively, sure one of the other vampires was about to end his life. But it was Michael.
Beside him on the gravel road, Michael chuckled. “The bastard threw me into you. Hell of a way to go out, huh?”
Dez exhaled and got his hands and knees under him. Michael was bloody-teethed, battered, obviously having no better luck than Dez. Dez pushed to his feet, planted his hands on his knees, and fought off a wave of dizziness. Michael rolled onto his stomach, got one foot under him, then tottered sideways. Dez caught him, steadied him, and got him on his feet. Together they faced the vampires, Siddu and the one with red hair. Jemila hadn’t shown up yet, nor had the two vampires who’d pursued Levi, but it was only a matter of time. The hilly gravel road loomed behind the vampires, and Dez thought, Pretty pathetic place for a last stand.
“All right, you motherfuckers,” Michael said. “Let’s finish this.”
Dez and Michael faced the vampires in the dusty gravel. A roar rent the day and behind the vampires, at the top of the fifteen-foot rise, appeared a sight Dez wouldn’t have believed had he not seen it.
A Dodge Ram pickup truck.
Dez grabbed Michael and dove for the shoulder. Peripherally, he saw the blue truck explode over the rise. The vampires were slow to turn, maybe because its appearance was so totally unexpected, and just as Siddu made to leap out of the way and the red-haired vampire tossed up his arms, the truck’s grill slammed into them and sent them tumbling like rag dolls over the dusty road. As he skidded on his stomach beside Michael, Dez shot a sideways look. The truck jounced violently but its momentum carried it over the strewn bodies. Siddu’s legs snapped like chicken bones; the tires appeared to bounce over the red-haired vampire’s head. The truck driver slammed on the brakes and the Dodge rumbled to a stop in a chalky cloud of dust.
“What the fuck is happening?” Michael said.
Dez didn’t answer, couldn’t have answered. He raised himself onto an elbow in time to see the Dodge driver shift into reverse and without pause, back over the red-haired vampire, who wasn’t moving anyway. The Dodge drew almost even with Dez and Michael, then peeled out, firing rocks everywhere, and made straight for Siddu, who seemed to be alive, if barely. The Dodge crunched over him, his slender limbs jagging in the air as if riding a live powerline. Then, for good measure, the truck pulled ahead, looped a U-turn, and bounced over both vampires again. The Dodge crunched to a halt beside Dez and Michael, and two figures climbed out. One was Cassandra.
The other was Jim the Werewolf.
Jim peered down at Dez. “I see you’re getting your ass kicked again. What else is new?”