Rage
When Dez bulled his way through a screen of ferns and nearly slipped on the moist pool deck, he was astonished to find Jim and Michael in the clutches of vampires. Aliyah, the queen’s servant, handmaiden, whatever the fuck she was, had Jim by the throat. Michael was facedown on the tile, Zixin’s boot on the back of his neck.
Michael’s eyes twitched up to Dez and he said, “Got him right where I want him.”
Vampires began to close on Dez. He raised the nozzle and squirted muriatic acid on the deck. The sulfurous stench made Dez’s throat itch.
The queen’s voice was freezing: “Put that down.”
Dez glanced up with watering eyes and beheld the throne area. Iris was seated to the queen’s left, Cassidy in the queen’s lap, all of them hedged in by various palms and vines.
A voice from above called, “Put that away before you make it worse on yourself.”
Dez saw the prince standing on the observation deck, his own mural looming over him. Dez raised the sprayer handle and painted the wall below the prince with acid. It wouldn’t reach the bastard, but maybe the fumes….
Evidently the prince did smell it, because his upper lip writhed into a snarl.
“You think that will accomplish anything?” the queen called. “At worst we’ll have to vacate the room until the chemical evaporates.”
Dez walked straight toward the bleachers. Straight toward the queen. He shot muriatic acid right and left, the vampires receding before him, then he paused to pump the handle. As he did, he heard the vampires coughing, and when he set off toward the queen, he glimpsed real alarm in her face.
“I’ll kill her,” the queen threatened.
Dez ducked under a palm frond and mounted the first bleacher. “No, you won’t. She’s one of you now.”
The queen thrust Cassidy into Aliyah’s arms and pounced on Iris. “Not the girl,” the queen said. “Your woman.”
Dez mounted the next bleacher and squirted acid toward the throne. “She’s not my woman,” he said. My God, his throat was tingling; the acid stench overwhelming.
The queen’s eyebrows rose. She brought a hand to her nose. “Still pining for Susan, then?”
Dez ignored that. “You’re the one who believes in owning people.”
The queen affected an eye roll, but devolved into a coughing fit.
“Put that down!” Aliyah called.
Dez pumped the handle, whirled and sprayed a vampire who’d been sneaking up on him in the face. The vampire squalled and tumbled down the bleachers.
“How dare you,” the queen said, and Dez lunged up the next bleacher, spraying acid in her direction. It would irritate Cassidy too, but it had to be done.
A vampire lunged at him from the cover of a hibiscus bush as tall as Dez. He just had time to spritz the vampire’s eyes with acid, and the creature – a younger man with a slight build – tumbled squalling at Dez’s feet.
“Stop this at once!” the queen shouted, panic gnawing the edge of her voice.
Good, Dez thought. “Give me Cassidy and my friends,” he said.
He climbed another bleacher and raised the sprayer tip toward the queen.
A rumbling voice behind Dez made them all freeze. “Raven!”
Dez whirled and saw, at the base of the bleachers maybe eight feet from Dez, a giant figure sheened with blood. Quincey. He wore a face mask. Behind the masked giant, the onyx saltwater roiled.
“Surrender your weapons,” the queen said.
The revolver was tucked in his jeans and concealed by his jacket. There it would stay. He placed the pump sprayer on a bleacher. From the way it sloshed, it was still three quarters full.
He nodded at the canister and looked at Iris. “If you get the chance to use it.”
Iris frowned.
He turned and leapt at Quincey. The vampire threw up his arms, and then Dez crashed into him and they tumbled into the pool.
* * *
He knew he had no time. Quincey would simply batten onto him with those vise-grip hands and throttle him until he either drowned or asphyxiated. Dez did the only thing he could think to do. He reached down and grabbed hold of Quincey’s nuts and squeezed as hard as he could.
Even underwater Dez could hear Quincey bellow. Quincey shoved away from him, then Dez pushed up from the pool bottom, breached the surface, and sucked in glorious breath. He kicked away from Quincey, but the giant recovered and started after him. Dez spun, began to stroke away, but Quincey seized his ankle and hauled him back. The giant had cast his mask away. His vampiric face grinned at Dez just above the water’s surface, the orange eyes glinting off the water. With his free foot Dez kicked at him, caught Quincey in the nose. Quincey grunted, growled but did not relinquish his grip. Dez flailed, but Quincey was inexorable. He dragged Dez into his iron embrace, opened his mouth to pierce Dez’s jugular. Dez jabbed his thumbnails into Quincey’s eyes. Quincey roared, clouted Dez a wild blow on the side of the head, and Dez foundered for a second, insensible, the whole Garden spinning. He thought he saw Quincey rubbing his eyes. And a shadow looming behind the huge vampire. Then Dez’s vision cleared, and he saw the speckled jade fin, the great humped back, the spread of the arms and tentacles.
Then the face. Finn, whatever the hell it was, had a face so grotesque Dez’s body went numb with terror. Like a bass or a trout, the eyes were overlarge and protruded from the sides of the beast’s head, but the lower half of the face was wide and leering like a vampire’s. The eyes gleamed blue, and Dez remembered that this abomination, impossibly, was once human. He fancied he could make out the person Finn once was in the brow, the nose.
Quincey had been blinking up at Dez and treading water, and now his face went slack, as he evidently realized what had swum up behind him. Quincey began to turn and the demented fish face twisted sideways and the barracuda teeth clamped down on Quincey’s sinewed neck. The pair crashed into Dez, pushed him under for a moment, then he extricated himself as Finn dove down with Quincey in its jaws, and blood began to cloud the churning saltwater. Sickened despite himself, Dez swam for the pool deck. Finn would make short work of Quincey. Whatever manner of creature Finn was, there was no fighting it.
Dez heard a commotion from the bleachers but focused on reaching the deck. He was no good to anyone here in the water, even less so if Finn tore him apart. After what seemed an endless journey, he reached the edge and dragged himself out. As he did he threw one more glance at the black water, sure that Finn would be leaping at him, his lethal jaws agape. But Finn was still under, somewhere in that roiling, blood-stained stew. His sodden clothes heavy, Dez pushed to his knees and was about to rise when he beheld the figure striding from the equipment room and emerging into the golden light.
It was the prince. In his arms he bore Cassandra. The front of her body was a ruin, deep gouges marring her neck and face.
“Does she live?” the queen asked. Dez glanced that way and saw the queen had her forearm cinched under Iris’s throat.
His spirits sank another notch.
“She’s alive,” the prince said. “But barely. What will we do with her, Mother?”
The queen smiled. “Behead them. Behead them all.”
A quartet of vampires manhandled Dez and Iris, and soon they’d joined their friends facedown on the black-painted pool deck. The prince carried Cassandra over, a smug smile on his face, and he placed her, not ungently, on the deck. They’d been lined up in a row. Cassandra’s motionless form followed by Michael, Jim, Dez, and Iris.
Dez said to Jim, “Sneak attack didn’t work out so well?”
Jim’s grunt was muffled since his cheek was pressed against the dank black tile. “That IT guy had a guard. We didn’t even see him until his gun was shoved against Michael’s skull.”
“Fucking vampires,” Michael muttered.
The queen asked, “Will you do the honors, my son?”
“With joy,” the prince answered.
A male vampire, no older than twenty, with spiked blond hair, hustled out of the equipment room bearing an axe. He hurried along the edge of the pool, taking care, Dez noticed, to give the water a wide berth. Apparently Finn’s destruction of Quincey had made an impression on the vampires too.
The prince strode to Cassandra, who Dez realized was still breathing, if barely. Blood bubbled from the corners of her mouth.
“Kill her last,” the queen said. “I want her to suffer.” A nod. “Start with that one.”
Oh Jesus, Dez thought. Iris.
The prince didn’t hesitate, merely sauntered over to Iris. He was raising his axe when Dez said, “Stop.”
“You cost me Quincey,” the queen said. “Now you’ll watch your friends die.”
“‘Cost me Quincey,’” Michael said. “You hear that? Still talking about him like he’s your property.”
Though he was lying on his stomach and his view of the queen was sideways and awkward, Dez saw her lips curve in a vicious smile. “I will enjoy watching you die,” she said.
“This ain’t over,” Michael said. But Dez couldn’t see how it would turn out well. Cassandra lay unconscious. The rest of them were pinned down by a throng of vampires. There were a dozen surrounding them, and that didn’t even take into account the queen and her son.
What about the princess? Dez wondered.
This thought scattered as soon as it arose because a small voice from the bleachers called out, “Mommy?”
Though it cost him an effort, Dez craned his head around to locate the source of the voice.
Cassidy.
“Mommy?” she said again.
“Just a moment, dear,” the queen said.
But Cassidy wasn’t looking at the queen; she was standing by herself before the throne with tears shimmering on her freckled cheeks. “Mommy?” she said, and Dez realized Iris was weeping, smiling and weeping, her daughter finally emerging from whatever fog she’d been in.
The queen’s mouth became a churlish twist. “Aliyah, take the child from the room. The fumes are getting to her.”
“Mommy’s here,” Iris said, her voice choked with emotion. “Mommy’s here.”
“Shut up,” Zixin said and ground his boot harder into Michael’s neck.
“Hey,” Michael protested, “why the hell are you taking it out on me?”
“Mommy,” Cassidy persisted.
“Get her out!” the queen raved. “Pederson, take Aliyah’s place with the old man. Now, Aliyah!”
The one named Pederson, a burly man with a close-cropped beard, stepped forward and planted a shoe between Jim’s shoulder blades. Aliyah left Jim and started toward Cassidy, but now Dez noticed something interesting: facedown on the black deck, Jim was peering toward the pool, his eyes glistening. A pulse beat in Dez’s temple.
“You’re thinking of your daughter, aren’t you?” Dez said.
Jim didn’t answer.
Dez swallowed, though the chemical fumes made his throat itch. “You remember how that lousy son-in-law didn’t protect her.”
Beyond Jim, Dez saw Michael’s head rise a little. “Man, what the fuck are you doing?”
But Dez knew there wasn’t time. The prince had the axe on his shoulder like a big-league slugger prowling the on-deck circle. Any moment one of them would lose their head, and this might be their only chance. Dez took a breath and thought back to the story Jim had told him, the dreadful tale of his daughter’s sexual assault and murder at the hands of the satyrs.
“You wish more than anything you could’ve been there, could’ve stopped what happened,” Dez said.
A teardrop crawled down Jim’s grizzled cheek.
Dez hated himself but said it anyway. “You still hear her screams, Jim. Your daughter.”
Jim began to shake his head, to whisper, “Stop,” but Dez sought for the name, which danced beyond the border of memory. “You remember how she was as a child. How much you loved your girl. How much you still do.”
Perhaps the queen sensed something amiss, because she said, “Do it, son. Kill the woman. Lucy will never be one of us while her mother yet lives.”
“Her name,” Iris said, “is Cassidy.”
But Cassidy was being borne roughly up the bleachers. The little girl was bawling, struggling against Aliyah, and Iris cried out, “Don’t take her! Don’t take my baby!”
The queen said, “Now, son. Do it now.”
The prince braced his legs beside Iris and raised the axe. Yet Iris didn’t seem to notice him, could only reach for her daughter, whom she was losing for the final time. And watching Cassidy stretch her arms fruitlessly toward her mother, Dez remembered the name, the name that haunted Jim, the name that tore his friend’s heart in half.
Dez leaned toward him and said, “These monsters are like the ones who took your Catherine.” Jim opened his mouth and bellowed, and the sound was unlike any Dez had ever heard. Low, raw, and so fearsome it made his eardrums vibrate.
Pederson was gaping down at Jim, whose body was twitching, whose shoulders tremored and bulged against the denim of his jacket.
The prince had lowered the axe. “Mom?”
Dez fought off an insane urge to laugh. Unlike the self-possessed ruler Dez had known since arriving, the prince now looked the part of the entitled brat Cassandra had described.
“What do we do?” the prince asked.
“Forget the girl,” the queen said. “Kill that old man…whatever he is.”
But Pederson was having trouble staying atop Jim’s juddering body. Pederson bared his teeth, bore down gamely on Jim, but Jim abruptly shoved up on all fours. Pederson windmilled his arms and tumbled against his vampire brethren.
“Chop his head off!” the queen yelled, her voice shrill.
On hands and knees, Jim jerked, shivered; his face darkened. Coarse hair threaded from under his jacket cuffs, the hands themselves broadening, the fingernails elongating and turning black.
Zixin, the vampire who’d pinned Michael down, was retreating, his mouth a shocked O. Michael scuttled away from Jim, his eyes wide. Dez drew the revolver. He hoped to God it still fired after being submerged.
“Mom?” the prince murmured.
“Kill him, goddamn you!” the queen screamed. “Kill— Oh give me the fucking axe.” With astonishing quickness, the queen leapt from her throne, landed nimbly on the pool deck, and snatched the axe from her son’s hands. She raised it above Jim’s convulsing body, and Dez swung the revolver up and shot her in the throat. The queen jolted. Every face in the room swiveled toward him, and Dez shot her again and again, watched her changing into her vampiric form, changing but staggering backward. The axe clattered to the tile, and Dez riddled her with bullets. A shape from his immediate right darted forward and sideswiped him; Dez and the vampire slammed onto the deck mere inches from the onyx pool water. It was a brown-haired woman, Dez had no idea what age because her face was changed. Her eyes were luminous, and she was champing at Dez’s throat like a starving jackal. She raised her head, fangs dripping with slaver, but before she could strike, her body jarred, her eyes shot wide, and she tried to whirl but was already twisting toward the water, a tentacle around her leg. Behind her Finn rose up and crunched its mighty jaws through her midsection. As Finn submerged with its newest victim, Iris crouched beside Dez on the pool deck, their faces inches apart. She carried the spray canister in one hand, but with the other, she touched Dez’s face.
“You came back for me,” she said.
“I always will,” he answered.
Together they peered up the bleachers toward Aliyah, who’d stopped halfway to the natatorium doors to watch the violence play out. In the foreground a figure rose.
It was Jim, but it was no longer Jim. His eyes glowed yellow. His body had grown to more than seven feet, and his thickened musculature had become glossy with coarse dark hair. He favored Dez and Iris with a satanic grin. Then he seemed to sense something behind him.
He turned and regarded Aliyah and Cassidy.
“Don’t you dare,” Aliyah said.
But Jim dared.
The werewolf barreled toward the bleachers, moving in that primitive loping stride Dez recalled from previous encounters with the beast, pots and planters overturning as he passed.
“Will he hurt Cassidy?” Iris said, climbing to her feet.
“He might,” Dez answered.
Iris set off across the pool deck after the werewolf.
Dez took a step after her but was intercepted by Zixin, who’d gone full vampire. He grinned at Dez, seized him by the jacket front, and opened his mouth.
Dez brought the revolver up to Zixin’s temple. Squeezed the trigger.
Click.
“Fuck,” Dez muttered.
Zixin leered at him, reared back, and Dez slid out the machete, thrust one arm against Zixin’s throat and swung the blade as forcefully as he could against the vampire’s arm. It chunked into Zixin’s bicep, and with a strangled cry the vampire thrust Dez away. Dez staggered back, saw Zixin unseat the machete, and just when he expected the vampire to attack him with it, Zixin chucked it aside and charged at Dez. Zixin had taken two steps when Michael darted in and knocked the vampire’s legs from under him. Zixin tumbled toward Dez in an ungainly heap, and Dez was just able to sidestep his whirring form.
Michael reached down, retrieved the machete, and said, “I got this one.”
Dez nodded, brushed past Michael, and sprinted toward the bleachers, where the werewolf was pursuing Aliyah and Cassidy through a dense grove of ferns. Iris was hot on the werewolf’s heels, shouting, “Don’t hurt her, Jim! Don’t hurt my daughter!”
If Jim caught any of that, he showed no sign. Aliyah gripped Cassidy around the waist, no longer taking care to be gentle. They almost reached the upper exit but the werewolf leapt at it, torpedolike, and Aliyah was just able to dive out of the way. Dez winced at how brutally Aliyah and Cassidy thumped against the bleachers, and evidently Iris noticed the rough landing too. “Be careful!” she screamed, but it wasn’t apparent whether she was addressing Aliyah or the werewolf. Probably both, Dez decided.
Dez took a few strides in pursuit, but then, peripherally, something whooshed toward him. He ducked just in time, rolled, and when he gained his feet saw the prince stalking after him with the axe. Holy shit, he thought. He damn near decapitated me. The prince’s face was rippling into the vampiric leer, but he still clutched the axe. Dez backpedaled, unnerved by the prince’s ghastly smile.
A jagged growl from behind him drew his attention. Dez looked that way and his stomach did a slow, bilious roll. The werewolf had cornered Aliyah in the upper deck of the bleachers, and she was using Iris’s child as a human shield. Cassidy whimpered in Aliyah’s arms, and Aliyah had her lethal jaws open, ready to crunch down on Cassidy’s neck. The werewolf didn’t appear to care. It advanced toward Aliyah and Cassidy, a deep growl rumbling in its throat.
“Jim, don’t,” Iris said, hustling toward him. She reached out, grabbed Jim’s hairy arm, and quicker than Dez would have believed, the werewolf lashed out at her and sent Iris tumbling between a pair of palm trees. The werewolf stalked toward Aliyah and Iris’s daughter.
“What are you waiting for?” the queen screamed, gaining her feet. “Help Aliyah!”
As one, the mass of vampires swarmed up the bleachers, the plants swaying with their passing. Something struck Dez in the side of the head. He landed on his ass, his eyes defocusing. The prince, he realized, had clouted him with the axe handle.
“How have you survived this long?” the prince asked, his words distorted by his ferocious canines. “Poor concentration, no special powers.” He loomed over Dez and twirled the axe handle. “But I’m sure your blood will taste divine.”
“Did you use an axe on your wife?” Dez asked. “Or just your fists?”
All humor drained from the prince’s face.
Dez nodded. “Cassandra told us about you. About your rap sheet. You were a real piece of shit before the bombs flew, weren’t you? Real tough man living large off your mom’s money and beating up your wife.”
The prince’s eyes glowed brighter than any Dez had ever seen. His fingers whitened on the axe handle as he stalked closer. “You…insolent…lamb.”
“Better than an abuser,” Dez said, and just as he was sure the prince would leap at him, a ground-shuddering roar drew their attention.
A vampire had leapt atop the werewolf’s back, had sunk his teeth into Jim’s shoulder. The werewolf reached back, batted at the vampire, but another darted at his ribs. Iris grabbed a potted plant, pivoted, and bashed the second vampire, the olive-green pot shattering on the squalling vampire’s head. The werewolf finally got ahold of the vampire chewing his shoulder, jerked it away and smashed it face-first into a bleacher. Dez heard the meaty crunch of the vampire’s skull giving way. Then, for good measure, the werewolf clutched the vampire’s lolling head and tore it from its body.
“I’ll deal with him after you,” the prince said, grasping Dez’s shoulders. Dez made to punch him, but the prince pivoted and heaved Dez toward the pool. For a moment the horrid black water was under Dez, then he cleared the corner of the pool and landed on the tiled deck, mere inches from where Finn lurked. Dez looked up and spotted the spray canister, which lay on its side near an ivy-festooned lifeguard stand.
“Don’t touch that,” the prince ordered, but Dez lifted the canister, brought it around, and just had time to put it between his face and the whistling axe, which embedded in the hard plastic. The odor of acid, already strong in the Garden, became withering. Dez coughed and shoved the leaking canister at the prince, who gasped and staggered back. Both the canister and the axe clattered to the deck. Dez jerked the axe out of the canister and was about to move toward the prince when something seized Dez’s ankle and wrenched it toward the water.
Finn.
Dez sucked in horrified air as Finn’s tentacle yanked him toward the pool. He relinquished his hold on the axe, snagged the steel base of the lifeguard stand, but Finn was implacable. Dez grasped the stand with both hands but still felt his grip slipping, the monster too powerful to resist. He threw a frantic look at Michael, who was straddling Zixin and hammering down at him again and again with the machete. Zixin’s arms were upthrust, but Michael was hacking away at them, striping the muscle tissue with deep wounds. But Dez’s grip was failing, the tentacle around his leg hauling him into the water.
Dez looked up in time to see the axe scything down at his wrists. It was the prince, his treacherous grin maniacal. Dez let go and the axe blade crunched into tile. Dez was immediately hauled over the edge into the pool, and just before he was dragged under, he caught himself on the ridged lip. The hold on his ankle momentarily broke, and Dez pushed up as vigorously as he could, wriggled onto the deck, but as swiftly as it had receded the tentacle was back. There were two of them now, one on each ankle, and Dez grabbed for the only thing within reach, the leaking canister.
Finn jerked him into the water a moment before the axe crashed down, chips of tile peppering the back of his head. Dez hit the water, went under, and despite the black walls of the pool, the overhead glow revealed the face of the beast, the hateful blue eyes, the spiny prongs protruding from its back. Its toothy maw opened, and undulating in its teeth were the meaty remains of its victims. An atavistic fear rocketed up Dez’s body, and he thrust the canister at Finn’s open mouth, saw it slide half into the beast’s pinkish gullet. Dez shut his eyes against the searing acid, but in the split second before that, Finn reacted to the canister, thrashing away in a fizzy maelstrom.
Dez surfaced, gasping, and swung an arm over the edge of the deck. He was halfway out when an object came pirouetting from the top of the bleachers and crashed down a few feet away. A headless vampire.
Decapitated by Jim, Dez thought.
He shot a look that way and saw the werewolf slash down at another vampire, the savage claws opening gill-like slits in the vampire’s throat. The vampire crumpled and clutched its hemorrhaging neck.
The prince remained fixated on Dez. “You are tenacious,” the prince said, twirling the axe. “I’ll give you that.”
Dripping wet, Dez faced the prince. “And you’re a coward. All that strength, and you still need a weapon.”
The prince grinned, tossed the axe aside. “That better?”
Beyond the prince, the werewolf waded into a mass of vampires, which immediately beset him. Palm trees were overturned, the ferns and flowers up there threshed by the battle. Dez couldn’t imagine Jim fighting much longer. Michael had evidently bested Zixin, but Pederson was closing in on him now; Michael looked depleted as he warded Pederson off with swipes of the bloody machete. Iris too, Dez noted with a glance, was futilely grappling with a vampire, and Aliyah appeared no closer to surrendering Cassidy.
They were nearly at the end.
The prince leapt at Dez, who dropped, but only partially evaded him. The two got tangled on the acid-soaked deck, the prince clawing at Dez with his razorlike nails and Dez aiming wild blows at the prince’s face. The prince slashed Dez’s collarbone, the pain like ice water, and Dez did the only thing he could think of; he swiped his fingertips over the acid-slicked deck and shoved them into the prince’s eyes.
The reaction was instantaneous. The prince yowled, tumbled off, and mashed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Dez got to his feet and hefted the axe. He swung it, buried it in the prince’s sternum. The prince grunted, seized the axe handle, and glared at Dez with red-rimmed eyes. Blood sluiced over the prince’s knuckles, but his gaze shifted to something to Dez’s left, something near the ground. Dez turned.
And beheld the vampire child.
The little vampire glowered at the prince with deathless hatred. The prince’s eyes widened. The child looked up at Dez, as if for permission, and Dez gave it a quick nod.
With a jaguar-like growl the vampire child sprang at the prince and plunged its face into his throat. Blood frothed over the deck, the prince’s body a paroxysm of agony. Dez left the pair like that and pounded toward the bleachers.
* * *
The throne area was a throbbing mass of bodies and blood and mangled plants. The werewolf was fighting valiantly, had killed at least four vampires, but Iris was bleeding from the arm and neck, and Aliyah was circling her for the kill.
The queen had taken possession of Cassidy.
Dez had no idea how Michael was faring, but from the sounds issuing from below, he was still doing battle with Pederson. But they couldn’t conquer the vampires this way. Not with Jim’s berserker energy flagging. As Dez mounted the bleachers he saw the werewolf leap toward an open spot, as if to recapture his strength, but a swarm of vampires followed, five of them at least. And in the golden overhead light Dez discovered the extent of Jim’s wounds; his furred body was matted and glistening with blood and torn flaps of skin.
Do something, he thought. Now.
Dez glanced down at the axe in his hand, then busted his ass up the bleachers, his long legs taking them two at a time. He made a hellacious noise bounding up the metal, but there was so much screaming and snarling that no one paid him any mind. The queen was shouting at her servants to tear Jim apart, and they were obliging. But it was toward Iris Dez ran, Iris, who’d been backed into a corner, with white cinder block on two sides of her, Aliyah hemming her in.
Don’t look up, Iris, he thought. Don’t give me away.
A split second before Dez swung the axe, Iris’s blue eyes twitched toward him and Aliyah threw out a hand, caught the axe handle just below the blade. Dez bared his teeth and fought to wrest it from her grip. Aliyah fixed her goblin’s leer upon him, and Iris kicked out, nailed Aliyah in the ribs. Aliyah growled, released the axe, and dove at Iris. The pair crashed against the wall, Aliyah’s teeth in terrible snapping motion. Dez began to raise the axe.
Thought better of it. If he heaved it down like splitting a cord of firewood, Aliyah might dodge it and he’d kill Iris instead. Beyond Aliyah’s whirring hands, he glimpsed Iris’s pleading look. He shuffled sideways, stepped into it, and gave it his best home run swing. The axe head sank all the way into Aliyah’s side with a pulpy schlurt. Aliyah gasped, tumbled sideways down a bleacher, and pawed at the axe. Iris sprang up and scrambled toward the queen and Cassidy. Dez wanted to finish Aliyah but knew Jim was about to die if he hadn’t already.
“Stop!” the queen commanded.
Dez pulled up twenty feet from the throng of vampires, who’d been creeping toward Jim, their orange eyes aglow. Iris stopped beside Dez.
“Either cease your resistance, or Lucy will suffer.” The queen grasped Cassidy by an ankle and dangled her toward the encroaching vampire horde.
“No!” Iris screamed.
“You three,” the queen said to her minions. “You finish the werewolf. The pair of you, you get the child.”
On command the quintet of vampires split. Jim had fallen between bleachers, and though he was still more wolf than man, the change had begun to reverse. His dark fur was soaked with blood, some of it his, most of it his victims’. His great chest was heaving, and though his face remained lupine, Dez fancied he could read the anguish there. The pair of vampires assigned to Cassidy edged toward the queen, bodies crouched but eyes upturned in hunger. Cassidy’s one of them, Dez mused, yet they’re still ready to cannibalize her. With a pitiless smirk the queen raised Cassidy higher. The vampire trio closed on Jim, their lethal claws groping.
Then Dez smelled something. It reminded him of hog roasts he’d attended as a child. The knot of vampires around Jim froze, a skirl of smoke rising from their midst. One of the vampires began to bat at the back of his neck and then a flare of fire shot out, engulfed all three vampires, and they were spinning, shrieking, tumbling down the bleachers. When Dez tracked one’s fall he discovered Michael on the pool deck, with his hand outstretched and his eyes squeezed tight in concentration.
Dez knew it was time. He charged the queen, intending to snatch Cassidy from her clutches, but the queen hauled Cassidy away and aimed a kick that struck Dez square in the chest and sent him reeling. He sat up in time to see Iris leap at the queen but the queen was too quick for her. She backhanded Iris in the jaw, and Iris smacked into the walkway above the bleachers. She was still conscious, but her eyes were glazed, her mouth bloody.
It kindled a molten rage in Dez. He got to his feet, brought up his fists in a fighting stance, and the queen howled laughter. “We’re going to spar, are we? Oh, this will be lovely!”
She dropped Cassidy, who immediately scrambled over to her mother. Iris wrapped her in a groggy embrace, and that, at least, was something. Dez returned his gaze to the queen, realized the change was restarting in her, and knew her bloodlust was his only hope. If he could somehow use that….
The queen approached him, the pair of vampires to whom she’d promised Cassidy ranged behind her, their faces alight with hunger.
“You’ve taken Quincey,” the queen said. “And you’re responsible for my son’s death.”
Dez glanced at Iris and thought, Go. You and Cassidy will never have a better chance to escape.
“Will you beg for mercy?” the queen asked, her voice deepening.
“Quincey was a sadist,” he said, retreating with every pace she took, “and your son was a loser. I can’t believe you raised such a fuckup.”
Her voice became a growl. “Do you really want your last words to be petty insults?”
Dez said, “You murdered your newborn granddaughter. You ate her fucking heart.”
The change was instantaneous. She roared, her eyes flaring orange, and dove at Dez, hurtling through a fifteen-foot gap. He barely had time to roll out of the way. He ducked under a palm tree, came up, swept a hand at Iris, yelled, “Run! Before they—”
Snarling, the queen grabbed a handful of his jacket and bullwhipped him sideways. He struck the cinder block wall a glancing blow. From below he saw Michael charging up the bleachers, but one of the queen’s guards peeled off toward him.
The queen darted at Dez, her devil’s grin widening. He heaved himself at her legs, tried to barrel-roll her, but instead of being upended, she merely barani-flipped over him and landed lightly on the concrete. Holy Christ, he thought. Cassandra was right about the queen. Her agility was mind-boggling.
Dez caught sight of Aliyah, who’d unseated the axe from her side and rested on all fours to let her wound knit.
He had to chance it. Without a weapon it was hopeless.
It’s hopeless anyway. You can’t defeat the queen.
Dez thrust that away and pelted toward Aliyah. He thought she’d react before he reached the axe, maybe even spring at him, but he snatched the axe cleanly from the floor and whirled to find the queen bearing down on him. He raised the axe handle to block her, but she crashed into him, sent them both clattering down the bleachers, the palm fronds ripping as they passed. Dez cracked his cheekbone against a bleacher edge and had a fleeting worry of landing on the axe, but he kept his hold on it and came to rest on the bottom bleacher.
The queen landed on her feet and lunged at him. Dez swung the axe, but the queen merely caught it and wrenched Dez off the bleacher. The axe clattered away and they tumbled to the pool deck, where the prince’s blood spread in a murky nimbus around his mutilated body. Dez splashed into the noxious spill of blood and muriatic acid. The vampire child continued to gorge on the prince, its bald head buried in his chest. The queen’s fingers clamped around Dez’s throat. She lifted him.
“Should I kill you by exsanguination?” she asked, her voice roughened, “or by more creative means?”
She suspended Dez over the water. “Perhaps you should perish the way Quincey did.”
As if in answer, the brackish water roiled. Evidently, Finn had survived the acid.
Commotion from the upper deck drew his gaze. Michael was fighting off a vampire, but Jim was nowhere to be seen. Neither were Iris or Cassidy. Had they escaped?
“Finn would be poetic justice,” the queen rumbled, “but that would be too swift.” She shifted him back over the deck, his shoes skimming the slippery tile. “You deserve to suffer.”
And with one index fingernail, she slowly traced a slit through his eyebrow.
Blood trickled onto his eyelash. He blinked, then closed his eye against the sheet of blood, and through the pain he heard the queen chortle.
“Yessss,” she purred. “Slow and sweet.”
Dez shoved his hands against her shoulders, but she drew him nearer, her long tongue drawing a line over his blood-slicked cheek.
“Mmm,” she said, her moan sexual. “You taste delicious, Raven. Perhaps I’ll weaken you and feed on you for days.”
The stench of the queen’s rancid-meat breath, the slithery sensation of her tongue worming over his cheek, made gooseflesh break out all over his body.
“Come closer,” she said, as if he had a choice. He shoved against her, but she handled him as easily as a newborn puppy, her long, freakish tongue working its way into his slit eyebrow, lapping at the exposed meat. “That’s a good boy,” she said. “Mmm…sweet nectar.” Dez bucked against her, but her body scarcely moved.
Then the queen jolted. Her eyes shot wide.
Dez felt himself released. He staggered sideways into the lifeguard stand and discovered Iris, who’d buried the machete two-handed into the queen’s lower back. The queen spun, the blade still embedded, but before she could lunge for Iris, Cassidy leapt at her and latched onto the queen’s leg just above the right knee. Dez gaped. So did Iris. So taken aback was the queen by the child’s attack that she nearly backpedaled into the pool. As if sensing a meal, the water under the queen churned, and she stumbled away from the deck edge with a gasp. Cassidy had affixed herself to the queen’s thigh, was growling and chewing, and the queen roared, seized the child, and cast her away. Cassidy crashed into the bottom bleacher, and Iris sprinted to her. Dez made a beeline for the queen and grabbed the machete handle.
But it was slimed with blood. When the queen spun, he lost his grip, and worse, she flashed out with a backhand that sent him reeling. He dropped to one knee, glanced up to see Iris turn a look of maternal fury upon the queen. Run, he thought. Take your daughter and go.
But even as the thought flashed across his mind, he knew Iris wouldn’t run. She’d chosen to fight by his side. She charged at the queen, and Dez pushed off the deck and shambled toward the queen too, and though Iris got there a moment before he did, together they were able to take her down. He had no idea where the machete was, and all they had were their fists, but he and Iris attacked the queen with every ounce of energy they had, punching, scratching, wringing her serpent’s throat. Yet even under the onslaught, the queen laughed at them, her monstrous jack-o’-lantern leer triumphant. She grabbed them both by a shoulder and jammed their bodies together, knocking their heads. Dez’s vision went gray. Dimly, he saw Iris slumped on her side, a trickle of blood oozing from her mouth, and the queen rolled over, opened her jaws, and prepared to bite down on Iris’s neck.
A shadow fell over the queen.
“This is for my daughter,” a voice said.
The queen looked up, eyes widening, and the axe whistled down and crunched through her nasal cavity. She slumped sideways and lay there spasming. Blood spewed from her ruined face.
Dez looked up and beheld the princess.
Mara stared grimly down at her mother. She raised the axe and swung again. And again. The queen’s face was split into messy pink loaves. Then Mara shuffled over, raised the axe, and severed her mother’s head in a stroke.